Hi there, I hope you're well. I had a few of questions about accessibility/disability access on London underground. 1. How many complaints does TFL receive about disabled access to the underground? 2. How many enquiries does TFL receive about disabled access to the underground? 3. How many reports/incidents do you have of people with disabilities having issues while on the underground? I am interested in the last 10 years as a time period but am particularly interested in the last few years. So ideally, if I could have answers to those questions over the past 10 years, that's great. If not, just as many of the recent years as possible? 4. Do you know how many people use disabled access on the London Underground on an average day? 5. How many underground stations provide full disability access in London? Is this still accurate? "Around a quarter of Tube stations, half of Overground stations, most piers, all tram stops, the Emirates Air Line and all DLR stations have step-free access." Thank you for your time!

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TfL Ref: FOI-1265-1920

Thank you for your email received by us on 30 July 2019 asking for information about accessibility.

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.

In relation to questions 1,2 and 3, we do not record whether a complaint received was made by a person with a disability, and so we are unable to provide this information in a reportable format.

We record complaints about disability access under the wider category of ‘Accessibility Related’, which would include non-disability issues such as people with pushchairs or suitcases. Therefore we are unable to provide the specific information you have requested in a reportable format. In order for us to provide the requester information we would need to manually review all of the ‘Accessibility Related’ complaints to locate and extract those that were specifically about disabled access to the London Underground.

Therefore, to provide the specific 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, and then locating, retrieving or 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 – equivalent to 18 hours work.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing or reframing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For example you may wish to ask for information on accessibility related complaints generally, noting that this will include complaints not specifically regarding disabled access.

In relation to your other questions, we do not have a record of the number of disabled users of the London Underground and so are unable to provide this.

Information regarding the step free transport options for passengers can be found at the following links:

https://tfl.gov.uk/transport-accessibility/

https://tfl.gov.uk/transport-accessibility/wheelchair-access-and-avoiding-stairs

Further information regarding the work we are doing to make rail travel more accessible can be seen on page 26 of our business plan at the following link: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-business-plan-2019-24.pdf

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

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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