Request ID: FOI-1452-2122 Date published: 21 October 2021
You asked
Please take this email as a Freedom of Information request for the following:
•All documents (including but not limited to incident reports), photographs, and video surveillance concerning graffiti applied to the exterior of London Underground trains between 27 November 2019 and 10 December 2019
Please let me know if you have any questions.
We answered
TfL Ref: 1452-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7 October 2021 asking for information about graffiti on London Underground trains.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. You asked for: All documents (including but not limited to incident reports), photographs, and video surveillance concerning graffiti applied to the exterior of London Underground trains between 27 November 2019 and 10 December 2019.
I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. However, it is not possible to source it all within the cost limit for responding to requests as set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, a public authority such as TfL is not required to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. There is no quick or efficient way of identifying and extracting all of the material that falls within the scope of your request and it is likely that some of the information you are asking for is held across a number of business areas. Trying to ascertain exactly what is and is not held in relation to your request and then sourcing it where it is held would take a considerable amount of time and would trigger the cost limit.
In order to bring your request within the cost limit you may wish to consider narrowing its scope to focus on the information that is of most importance to you. Before doing so you may wish to review the advice and guidance offered by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, published on its website here (I would, in particular, point you to the table of “Dos and Don’t’s” that can be found halfway down the page):
The narrower and more specific the scope of your request the more likely it is we will be able to respond positively within the costs limit. Please be aware also that the FOI Act pertains to recorded information only.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Sara Thomas FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
