This individual is exercising the public's right of access to information regarding completed legal cases bought against Transport for London (TFL). Specifically, the information should detail cases where TFL was the defendant and was judged by the either the court or a tribunal in England to have been unsuccessful in their defence, i.e. guilty of some practice. To increase the specificity of the request, we say, the information to be shared should contain statistics on how many of such (concluded and unsuccessful for TFL) cases were bought against TFL in the years 2005 - 2020 Additionally, information on TFL response to these unsuccessful defences is required. To be clear, confidential details on the particularities of the case is not was is being requested. Nor is any comments on ongoing legal matters being asked for. Regards

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Our ref: FOI-1004-2021

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7 September 2020 asking for information about legal action against TfL.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our Information Access Policy. You asked for:

Information regarding completed legal cases brought against TfL. Specifically, the information should detail cases where TfL was the defendant and was judged by the either the court or a tribunal in England to have been unsuccessful in their defence, i.e. guilty of some practice.  To increase the specificity of the request, we say, the information to be shared should contain statistics on how many of such (concluded and unsuccessful for TfL) cases were brought against TfL in the years 2005 – 2020. Additionally, information on TfL’s response to these unsuccessful defences is required.

Unfortunately, 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 a request 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.

We have estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

In order to collate all the information you have requested would be very time consuming because we would need to manually check the records for each legal case brought against TfL over a 15 year period, which will exceed the 18 hour limit.

Every 6 months, a Legal Compliance Report which has been published since December 2013,  is presented to the Audit and Assurance Committee of the TfL Board, which provides some of the information you requested (albeit not exactly in the format requested – nor will it necessarily provide information on ‘TfL’s response to these unsuccessful defences’).

The report details any alleged breaches of law in the preceding 6 months and covers: (a) prosecutions against TfL; (b) formal warnings or notices from regulators (c) investigations by an Ombudsman; (d) alleged legal breaches notified by Local Authorities or other bodies; (e) judicial reviews; (f) involvement in inquests; (g) commercial/contract claims in excess of £100,000; (h) personal injury claims; (i) proceedings in relation to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, equal pay or breach of contract; (j) wrongful or unfair dismissal; (k) actions to recover unpaid debt in excess of £5,000; (l) breaches of EU/UK procurement rules and/or the Competition Act; (m) other material breaches of the law; (n) any other material compliance issues

Each report can be found at:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/audit-and-assurance-committee/audit-and-assurance-past-years

Generally, the report is published with the papers for the June and December Committee meetings, each year. It is listed as a separate item on the published agenda for each of those meetings. But there was no meeting in Dec 2016 and instead the relevant report was considered at the next meeting of the Committee, in March 2017. Also in 2017, there was a meeting in July rather than June.

However, we are issuing a refusal notice to your request as a whole and you may wish to revise your requests and prioritise which information you require within the 18 hour limit.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking.

If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by Transport for London. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for.

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.

Please note the Government has announced a series of measures to tackle the Coronavirus. It is essential for London, and in particular for all critical workers, that we continue to provide a safe transport network that enables them to make the journeys they need to.

In current circumstances, we are not able to answer FOI requests readily and we ask that you please do not make a request to us at present.

Answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. In any event, please note that our response time will be affected by the current situation.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Melissa Nichols

FOI Case Officer

General Counsel

Transport for London

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