Please treat this email as a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I am seeking information concerning taxi and private hire drivers and the Equality Act 2010. I would like to know: - How many taxi and private hire drivers within your authority have been fined, prosecuted or had their licences revoked from 6 April 2017 to the present day for being in breach of the newly amended Equality Act 2010, which states taxi drivers will face a fine of up to £1,000 if they refuse to transport wheelchair users or attempt to charge them extra https://www.gov.uk/government/news/law-change-demands-equal-treatment-for-disabled-taxi-users. Please specify the action taken and the date on which the action occurred - I would also like to know how many complaints have been made to your authority specifically in relation to this legislation from 6 April 2017 to the present day. Please specify the nature of the complaint and the date of the complaint - I would also like to know how many complaints have been made to your authority – from September 2015 to the present day – about drivers on the issues of discrimination against the disabled, overcharging disabled passengers and providing assistance to the disabled. Please specify the nature of the complaint and the date of the complaint Please provide the information in the form of an Excel document. If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under your Section 16 obligations, as to how I can refine my request to be included in the scope of the Act. In any case, if you can identify ways that my request could be refined, please provide further advice and assistance to indicate this.

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TfL Ref: 1281-1718

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 29 August 2017 asking for information about taxi and private hire drivers and the Equality Act 2010.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our Information Access Policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. You asked:

How many taxi and private hire drivers within your authority have been fined, prosecuted or had their licences revoked from 6 April 2017 to the present day for being in breach of the newly amended Equality Act 2010, which states taxi drivers will face a fine of up to £1,000 if they refuse to transport wheelchair users or attempt to charge them extra https://www.gov.uk/government/news/law-change-demands-equal-treatment-for-disabled-taxi-users. Please specify the action taken and the date on which the action occurred

From 6 April 2017 to 24 August 2017, TfL has made no licence revocations in relation to the Equality Act 2010. However, in this period, 24 complaints have been referred for investigation. Of these, 18 are actively being investigated, four have been closed without any further action required, one has been referred to our legal team for prosecution and one for a review of the driver’s fitness to hold a licence.

We are unable to provide the date of the outcome on each case as our system does not hold this information. We capture the date of the incident and the date that it was referred for investigation, however, we do not capture the date of the outcome.

I would also like to know how many complaints have been made to your authority specifically in relation to this legislation from 6 April 2017 to the present day. Please specify the nature of the complaint and the date of the complaint.

I would also like to know how many complaints have been made to your authority – from September 2015 to the present day – about drivers on the issues of discrimination against the disabled, overcharging disabled passengers and providing assistance to the disabled. Please specify the nature of the complaint and the date of the complaint

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 do not keep a separate record detailing these specific complaints criteria, so to locate and collate those that are relevant to your request would require a manual review of all complaints received during the specified period. This amounts to in excess of 7,000 complaints that we have identified as potentially falling within scope of your request, each of which would need to be individually reviewed to determine the nature of the complaint and then compile a list of all those that are relevant.

To conduct this task for such a significant volume of correspondence would significantly exceed the cost limit. 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.

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 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 Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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