TfL Ref: 1126-1920

Thank you for your request received by us on 16 July 2019 asking for information about London Underground ticket offices and opening hours.

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 some of the information you require. You asked for:

1. The number of ticket offices on the underground network in each year since 2010.
2. The average opening hours of ticket offices on the underground in each year since 2010.

Unfortunately, to provide the above 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.

This is because the information you have requested is not available in a readily accessible format and would require the retrieval and review of each ticket office log book that is currently archived in our record store from 2010 to date. Ticket office log books can be used to record opening and closing times amongst other matters such as a record of events and so on, although there is no guarantee that the requested times are recorded in these documents. We understand that there used to be one ticket office log book per month per station and for the purposes of your request we would need to go through 3,674 boxes and 3240 log books for each year, given that there are 270 London Underground stations.

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 us. 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. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do 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 that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

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

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London