I write this letter to request correspondence from yourselves owing to damage and personal injury that I sustained whilst riding my bicycle on the A22 - Godstone Road. The pothole location is 200m in the vicinity of CR8 5JE on the same side of the road as a cafe called “Top Cafe.” In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, I request details of: (1) How many incidents have road users sustained damage to their bicycles or vehicles in this stretch of road where the pot hole is located in the last two years (May 2017 to 2019). (2) The repair/maintenance records for this stretch of road in the last two years (May 2017 to 2019). (3) The outcome of complainants cases when challenging for damages in the last seven years (May 2012 to 2019).

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TfL Ref: FOI-0985-1920

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 2^nd July 2019 asking for information about the A22 Godstone Road as follows:

“In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, I request details of: (1) How many incidents have road users sustained damage to their bicycles or vehicles in this stretch of road where the pot hole is located in the last two years (May 2017 to 2019). (2) The repair/maintenance records for this stretch of road in the last two years (May 2017 to 2019). (3) The outcome of complainants cases when challenging for damages in the last seven years (May 2012 to 2019).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we hold some of the requested information. However, we estimate that to provide it 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, and then locating, retrieving or 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 – equivalent to 18 hours work.

This is largely on account of your questions 1 and 3, for which the information has not previously been compiled and which could only be sourced by reviewing individual records. For example, in relation to Question 3, we hold data going back to 2013. This can be broken down into contractor areas such as ‘south’, but to break it down further – for a specific road or stretch of road – we would need to locate and review over 660 individual claims, which we estimate in itself would exceed the costs threshold notwithstanding your other questions.

In order to bring your request within the costs threshold you may wish to consider reframing its scope. However, that said, I can provide you with information that already readily exists in relation to your second question (provided in the attached spreadsheet) which I hope will be of assistance (note that you may need to expand the width of some of the columns within the spreadsheet to see the data in full).

Given that your FOI request was embedded within wider correspondence, sent to the TfL FOI team, can you explain whether there is anything further that you would like us to do with it? For example, if you are intending to make a personal injury claim I can pass it on to the relevant department to take forward. In the absence of any response we will consider the correspondence closed.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely,

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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