FOI request detail

HR Policies and appeal cases

Request ID: FOI-0667-1819
Date published: 25 June 2018

You asked

Please give me copies of all your HR policies for every for last 11 years especially on Equality and Discrimination Please provide me details of all appealed cases in the last 5 years. Please provide me details of all licenses held in last 10 years of drivers with criminal convictions.

We answered

TfL Ref: 0667-1819

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 5 June 2018 as below. I am responding to the FOI part of your request – points 6, 8 and 9 only.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.  I can confirm we hold some of the information you require.

However, as the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described. We have estimated that it would considerably exceed the limit to provide a response to your current request.

All licensed taxi and private hire drivers are subject to an enhanced criminal record check. Each case will be dealt with on its own merits in consideration with any previous offences a driver may have committed and information gathered from other agencies, such as the Police. Transport for London (TfL) makes licensing decisions in consultation with TfL's private hire driver and operator policy to ensure the public remain safe using private hire services.

Once a decision on a driver's application has been made the results of the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check have to be destroyed in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice, which has statutory backing. Therefore, we do not hold all details of convictions and cautions unless it has been referred to a Licensing Manager, or higher, for consideration for approval/refusal. The only recorded convictions would be those declared to us by the driver and in order to provide the information requested we would have to check around 120,000 individual electronic drivers records and then list the conviction details, if held.

With regard to your request for all ‘HR policies for every for last 11 years especially on Equality and Discrimination’, this would also be a significant task to locate and gather them together, as this would include all our current and former attendance, performance and reward policies.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking.  It is likely for example that we could provide our HR Equality and Inclusion policies within the cost limit.   

If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request.

I am sorry we are not able to assist you on this occasion.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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