Our Ref:         FOI-1182-1920

Thank you for your request received on 23 July 2019 asking for information about silica exposure.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and TfL’s information access policy.

Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the FOI (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 cost in excess of £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

Several parts of your request are very broad and potentially capture a large amount of information. For example, the first part of your requests asks for “TfL correspondence” over a three year period but does not state a subject matter, keywords we could search against, or who in TfL you would like our search to cover. By their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses and so, whilst this process of redaction does not feature as part of our considerations on whether the cost limit might apply, the burden created by non-specific requests for emails is significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting requests of this nature. Similarly, part two of your request does not specify what “monitors” you are referring to and therefore potentially covers any/all TfL monitors and part nine of does not indicate where these “logs” might be held.

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 FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI 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. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of TfL. Requests that lack a clear focus are more likely to lead to concerns about the processing time required to meet our obligations under the FOI Act. Please note that we will not be processing your request until we have received suitable clarification of the information you require.

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.

As stated in our email below, it still appears that you want information regarding your personal data (i.e. emails about you/that mention you). As previously advised, this falls under a Subject Access Request, rather than Freedom of Information. You may find more details on this here: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/privacy-and-cookies/access-your-data.

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 feel free to contact me.

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

[email protected]