Request ID: FOI-1161-2122 Date published: 30 September 2021
You asked
I would like the following information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding TFL’s decision to refuse to license Cribble as referenced in the TPH Notice 01/09 dated 8 March 2019:
1. A copy of the impact assessment and any associated meeting notes, emails, or correspondence in respect of the decision made that the Cribble app would amount to any private hire drivers working via the app would be plying for hire which is unlawful.
2. The names and roles of persons responsible for commissioning any such impact assessments and of those who received its conclusions.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-1161-2122
Thank you for your request received on 5 September 2021 asking for information about Cribble.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require. You asked for:
1. A copy of the impact assessment and any associated meeting notes, emails, or correspondence in respect of the decision made that the Cribble app would amount to any private hire drivers working via the app would be plying for hire which is unlawful. 2. The names and roles of persons responsible for commissioning any such impact assessments and of those who received its conclusions.
Impact assessment
We do not hold an impact assessment in relation to the Cribble app. Cribble was not licensed as a London private hire vehicle (PHV) operator nor had it applied to TfL for a London PHV operator’s licence. TfL advised private hire licensees of the situation, in 2019, in a Taxi and Private Hire Notice which is available on our website: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/08-03-19-tph-notice-cribble.pdf.
Any associated meeting notes, emails, or correspondence
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 provide the associated meeting notes, emails, or correspondence in respect of the decision that private hire drivers working via the Cribble app would be unlawfully plying for hire, would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
Licensing decisions and the requesting and provision of legal opinion and advice is conducted within the general course of business and so there is no central repository or reportable manner in which this information can be easily obtained. In order to ascertain whether we hold any information in response to your request we would need to manually review a significant volume of correspondence to consider what, if anything, fits within the scope of your request. This would be an extensive process for which it would be difficult to determine at what point we could be satisfied that we have exhausted all avenues of searching and therefore in a position to provide a full response. As a result the cost limit would be significantly breached.
In the event you were to refine your request within the cost limit it is likely we would need to strongly consider section 31(1)(g), which relates to information where disclosure would be likely to prejudice the exercise by any public authority of its functions and section 42, which exempts legally privileged information.
In this instance the exemption has been applied as the information is held only for the purposes of ascertaining whether a Private Hire operator is complying with the regulations, in accordance with our responsibility for regulating the private hire trade in London.
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, the Freedom of Information Act can only be used to request recorded information. 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 see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
