Request ID: FOI-1260-2223 Date published: 14 September 2022
You asked
Correspondence (and attached documents) relating to Battersea Bridge between TfL (specifically Andy Byford, Will Norman, Penny Rees) and: 1) RBKC 2) Rob McGibbon 3) Cheyne Walk Trust 4) any other local residents associations or their representatives.
Requested dates: from 20 October 2021 to 22 August 2022.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-1260-2223
Thank you for your request received on 22 August 2022 asking for information about the improvements to Battersea Bridge.
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 the information you require.
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 cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
When requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case Management team are able to conduct company wide email searches using keywords, dates and email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once.
We have done an initial search for all emails held by TfL that were sent/received by the three named individuals containing the keyword ‘Battersea Bridge’ in the specified timeframe. This has returned almost 3,000 hits. We would need to manually review all of the emails identified in order to extract and collate the relevant emails. Additionally we have carried out a search for emails involving Rob McGibbon, Cheyne Walk Trust, and/or RBKC and this has produced an additional 209 hits. These would also need to be reviewed manually to remove any irrelevant emails.
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, you may wish to narrow the timeframe or provide additional keywords that we can search against.
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.
We therefore strongly recommend you outline, as clearly and concisely as possible the information you require. Rather than a blanket request for correspondence, if you have specific questions that you would like to ask this may be more helpful than a request for correspondence. 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.
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. 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
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
