Questions about CC and Victoria Street Congestion entry location
Request ID: FOI-0885-2122 Date published: 13 August 2021
You asked
1: Is TFL congestion charge a service? and/or is it considered a privilege to drive in the congestion zone?
2: Is the congestion charge a law on the road or a rule?
3: With a significant build up in traffic due to social distancing, road closures and the current climate, at the point of Bressenden place/Victoria street where the congestion charge entry is, does TFL consider that the congestion charge signs can be obstructed from the view of the driver, by building developments and large commercial vehicles?
Does TFL recognise that vehicles ability to obstruct signage can cause unwanted and unintentional entry to the congestion charge zone?
4: Where are the congestion charge signs (entry and exit) and repeater or camera signs along Victoria Street, London.
5: What are TFLs expectations when it says all drivers should familiarise themselves with the congestion charge regulatory signs? Are drivers expected to know where all of them are? Some of them? What is the meaning here?
6: While it is required of drivers to be aware of road signs and meanings, Is it a legal requirement by law or any road user manual to be aware or familiar with all Congestion Charge entry points?
7: In relation to the ongoing building development at Bressenden place/Victoria street, the workers had mounted opaque fences to create a barrier. Has TFL had any communication of concerns or complaint from road users or any other person or authority regarding the fences creating an obstruction in vision or a blind spot on the road and/or restricting views of road signage in the area?
Has TFL ever had to require that the fences be a kind that a driver or someone on the road can see through or to the other side?
Has TFL knowledge of the building works going on at Bressenden place Victoria Street?
7: Have TFL received any comments, complaints or concerns with regards to visibility of Congestion charge regulatory signage at the Victoria street location?
9: Will the congestion charge extension of time to 10pm and Saturday and Sundays end as the pandemic restrictions are end? If so when? If not, why not as it was said to be implemented as an emergency?
10: Are there more cars entering the congestion zone now than before March 1 2020? Or have numbers become similar?
11: Does TFL hold the view that all the regulatory congestion charge signs are visible in all circumstances for road users? Or does TFL has some understanding that there are unique circumstances where signs may become obstructed
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0885-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 29th July 2021 asking for information about the Congestion Charge entry location at Bressenden Place / Victoria Street.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“1: Is TFL congestion charge a service? and/or is it considered a privilege to drive in the congestion zone?
2: Is the congestion charge a law on the road or a rule?
3: With a significant build up in traffic due to social distancing, road closures and the current climate, at the point of Bressenden place/Victoria street where the congestion charge entry is, does TFL consider that the congestion charge signs can be obstructed from the view of the driver, by building developments and large commercial vehicles?
Does TFL recognise that vehicles ability to obstruct signage can cause unwanted and unintentional entry to the congestion charge zone?
4: Where are the congestion charge signs (entry and exit) and repeater or camera signs along Victoria Street, London.
5: What are TFLs expectations when it says all drivers should familiarise themselves with the congestion charge regulatory signs? Are drivers expected to know where all of them are? Some of them? What is the meaning here?
6: While it is required of drivers to be aware of road signs and meanings, Is it a legal requirement by law or any road user manual to be aware or familiar with all Congestion Charge entry points?
7: In relation to the ongoing building development at Bressenden place/Victoria street, the workers had mounted opaque fences to create a barrier. Has TFL had any communication of concerns or complaint from road users or any other person or authority regarding the fences creating an obstruction in vision or a blind spot on the road and/or restricting views of road signage in the area?
Has TFL ever had to require that the fences be a kind that a driver or someone on the road can see through or to the other side?
Has TFL knowledge of the building works going on at Bressenden place Victoria Street?
8: Have TFL received any comments, complaints or concerns with regards to visibility of Congestion charge regulatory signage at the Victoria street location?
9: Will the congestion charge extension of time to 10pm and Saturday and Sundays end as the pandemic restrictions are end? If so when? If not, why not as it was said to be implemented as an emergency?
10: Are there more cars entering the congestion zone now than before March 1 2020? Or have numbers become similar?
11: Does TFL hold the view that all the regulatory congestion charge signs are visible in all circumstances for road users? Or does TFL has some understanding that there are unique circumstances where signs may become obstructed.”
Please note that the Freedom of Information Act relates to requests for recorded information only. It does not cover requests for explanation or opinion (which can, instead, be put to our Customer Services team separately via the followiing link: https://tfl.gov.uk/help-and-contact/).
In terms of your requests for recorded information, I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. However, I am afraid that to source it all would cost more than the threshold for answering FOI cases as set out under section 12 of the FOI Act. Under section 12 TfL is not required to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if the information is held and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
There is no easy or efficient way of sourcing all of the information you have requested, some of which would require a manual trawl of records. For example, your question number 8 spans the entire history of the Congestion Charge since it was first implemented in 2003. “Comments, complaints or concerns” about aspects of the scheme may have been made to different parts of the organisation - for example, either to our Customer Services team or separately to our Road User Charging team - who have their own case management systems. Neither team would be able to easily find those items which are specifically about the visibility of signage at the Victoria street location as they would be logged using a more general categorisation. The only way of locating this specific material would be to search through thousands of individual records. This is not possible within the costs limit. This example relates to just one of your questions. Sourcing the information to answer them all would clearly take much longer still.
In order to to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to reframe it to narrow its scope and to focus on the information that is of most importance to you (and by separating requests for explanation from requests for recorded information). Before doing so you may wish to review the advice and guidance from the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, published on its website here:
