Request ID: FOI-0669-2223 Date published: 07 July 2022
You asked
As you may have seen in the news yesterday it has been revealed that the government wants to permanently shut down each and every ticket office on the entire railway networks in the UK.
Therefore i would like to see some statistics from each ticket office as i believe this information is important to see so that we can know how much usage ticket offices are getting.
For each and every ticket office that you run i would like to know the total amount of tickets sold at each ticket office during each of the following twelve years:
• 01/01/2010 to 31/12/2010
• 01/01/2011 to 31/12/2011
• 01/01/2012 to 31/12/2012
• 01/01/2013 to 31/12/2013
• 01/01/2014 to 31/12/2014
• 01/01/2015 to 31/12/2015
• 01/01/2016 to 31/12/2016
• 01/01/2017 to 31/12/2017
• 01/01/2018 to 31/12/2018
• 01/01/2019 to 31/12/2019
• 01/01/2020 to 31/12/2020
• 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2021
Note that it must be the broken down by ticket office (so how many tickets that each of your ticket offices has sold for each period) and not just one sum for all of your ticket offices combined.
Also note that my request is solely in regards to London Overground served stations and TFL Rail served stations only and i am not asking about London Underground or Docklands Light Railway or Croydon Tramlink or London Buses or anything else as i know these ticket offices closed years ago.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-0669-2223
Thank you for your request received on 20 June 2022 asking for information about ticket office sales at London Overground and TfL Rail (now part of the Elizabeth line) stations.
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.
Unfortunately, to provide 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 cost over £1300 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 52 hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
We hold some of the information for the following Elizabeth line stations, the remaining ones on the network are managed by either Network Rail, Great Western Rail, or Greater Anglia so we are unable to provide data for those stations: Abbey Wood Brentwood Chadwell Heath Forest Gate Gidea Park Goodmayes Harold Wood Ilford Manor park Maryland Romford Seven Kings Stratford Acton Main line Ealing Broadway West Ealing Hanwell Southall Hayes & Harlington West Drayton Iver Langley Burnham Taplow
Providing the requested information just for these stations, along with the information for London Overground, would still exceed the appropriate limit.
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. We would be able to provide you with the London Overground information requested if this was the only information you were seeking.
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 might also consider limiting your request to a narrower period of time or specific stations.
Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
