Cost of damage by motor vehicles to TfL infrastructure
Request ID: FOI-1196-1718
Date published: 24 October 2017
You asked
1) How many instances have there been in the last 5 years where TfL has had to repair or replace infrastructure (including but not limited to traffic lights, street lighting, bollards, bus shelters, street signage) because said infrastructure had being damaged as a result of a collision with a motor vehicle of any sort
2) How much money has TfL had to spend in order to repair or replace that infrastructure
3) How much of that money has TfL successfully recovered from the responsible party (vehicle driver/owner/operator), through their motor vehicle insurance or otherwise
We answered
Thank you for your email received by us on 17 August 2017 asking for information on damage caused to TfL infrastructure by motor vehicles. I sincerely apologise for the delay in replying.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold some of the information you require.
You asked:
1) How many instances have there been in the last 5 years where TfL has had to repair or replace infrastructure (including but not limited to traffic lights, street lighting, bollards, bus shelters, street signage) because said infrastructure had being damaged as a result of a collision with a motor vehicle of any sort
2) How much money has TfL had to spend in order to repair or replace that infrastructure
3) How much of that money has TfL successfully recovered from the responsible party (vehicle driver/owner/operator), through their motor vehicle insurance or otherwise
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 significantly exceed the appropriate limit to provide a response to your current request. This is because relevant information which would fall within scope of this request covering the past five years is not recorded separately and would require examining the fault history of all 6000+ installations in detail which we estimate would take several hundred hours to do. We only cost up claims not incidents, and we only pursue a claim if we have significant evidence of the incident. Under our new contract (since November 2014) the risk falls to our contractor. However, under the previous contract, the costs of equipment and labour were not separated out from the general costs of equipment and the maintenance contract.
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. For example we may be able to provide information on the number and value of claims pursued for a particular period, and our claim success rate. 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 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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
Back to top
