Our ref: FOI-0702-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 30 May 2024 asking for information about Blackwall tunnel.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. 

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’. TfL have been operating London’s 12 road tunnels since 2009. During that time, we have used at least two different computer systems. Even if we limited ourselves to just the current computer system, there are about 114000 incidents held in that system. There is no search facility available to obtain the date, location, severity, whether a fire was involved, number of vehicles and casualties involved. We estimate it would take in excess of 18 hours and divert a considerable amount of staff time away from their core functions in trying to identify, locate and extract the information you seek.

To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you. 

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does 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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Tahsin Prima

FOI Case Officer

General Counsel

Transport for London