Documents relating to the façades of 23-24 Leinster Gardens, W2
Request ID: FOI-0776-2223 Date published: 27 July 2022
You asked
I would like to request all available documents that TfL may hold relating to the façades of 23-24 Leinster Gardens, above the London Underground lines between Paddington and Bayswater.
Can I request copies of documents relating to the construction and purchase (historical), current ownership of them and the front gardens, maintenance information, contractor information, cost of upkeep, security and repair.
Documents relating to the CCTV which monitors the façades and their front gardens, name and details of the operator and nominated data controller.
Also details of who, if anybody, has the right currently, and any previous agreements to use the front gardens of 23-24 Leinster Gardens.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0776-2223
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 30th June 2022 asking for information about 23-24 Leinster Gardens.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“I would like to request all available documents that TfL may hold relating to the façades of 23-24 Leinster Gardens, above the London Underground lines between Paddington and Bayswater.
Can I request copies of documents relating to the construction and purchase (historical), current ownership of them and the front gardens, maintenance information, contractor information, cost of upkeep, security and repair.
Documents relating to the CCTV which monitors the façades and their front gardens, name and details of the operator and nominated data controller.
Also details of who, if anybody, has the right currently, and any previous agreements to use the front gardens of 23-24 Leinster Gardens.”
I am afraid that it is not possible to source all of the information that falls within the scope of your request within the costs limit for responding to FOI cases, as set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12 TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
In this case the costs exemption applies because of the wide range of the information requested. In your request you ask for “all available documents that TfL may hold relating to the façades of 23-24 Leinster”. This potentially covers a vast amount of information going back many decades (note that the facades were constructed in the 19th century). To find all of the information that may be held by TfL within the scope of the request would be an excessively time consuming task. I would therefore suggest that you reframe your request to narrow its scope, and to focus on the information that is of most importance to you.
In considering any revised request I would suggest you first read the advice and guidance provided by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, pubished online here:
As you can see, the table of “Dos and Don’t’s” found halfway down that page includes the following advice:
Don’t...” Send ‘catch-all’ requests for information (such as ‘please provide me with everything you hold about ‘x’) when you aren’t sure what specific documents to ask for.”
Don’t...”Deliberately ‘fish’ for information by submitting a very broad or random requests in the hope it will catch something noteworthy or otherwise useful. Requests should be directed towards obtaining information on a particular issue, rather than relying on pot luck to see if anything of interest is revealed.”
Don’t...”Disrupt a public authority by the sheer weight of requests or the volume of information requested.”
I would further suggest that before submitting any revised request you first visit the Corporate Archives pages of the TfL website, as our archives are the most likely source for much of this information. The Archives pages can be found here:
You can search the Online Catalogue and Digital Collections here (for example, by searching for “Leinster Gardens” or just “Leinster” in the search fields):
For more assistance on searching the archives or to book a visit to review paper documents, you can contact colleagues in our Corporate Archives team at: [email protected]
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
