Request ID: FOI-0943-2425 Date published: 18 July 2024
You asked
Could you confirm how many Taxi Drivers records have been referred to TFLs Occupational Health Doctor in the last three years of these how many were referred to have a Driving Assessment. Those that had a Driving Assessment what medical conditions did they have or suffer from. I do not require any personal names or information. Could you kindly break this information down on a yearly bases. I request this information under the Freedom of Information Act.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0943-2425/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 21 June 2024 asking for information about taxi drivers.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. You asked:
Could you also confirm how many Taxi Drivers records have been referred to TFLs Occupational Health Doctor in the last three years of these how many were referred to have a Driving Assessment. Those that had a Driving Assessment what medical conditions did they have or suffer from. I do not require any personal names or information. Could you kindly break this information down on a yearly bases. I request this information under the Freedom of Information Act.
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’.
Unfortunately, we do not record referrals to our Occupational Health department in a way which enables us to easily separate taxi driver referrals from those of private hire drivers.
We refer approximately 50 cases per week, and as you have asked for this information for the past three years, we would need to find and manually check approximately 8,000 records, which would take an excessive amount of time and resources.
To answer your request we would need to manually check each of these, to firstly ascertain if they were taxi drivers, and then to compile the information on whether they had a driving assessment and what medical conditions were recorded.
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
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
