I would like to know how many congestion charge fine appeals have been received by TfL from people who have diverted due to the closure of Vauxhall Bridge and how many were upheld. My second request is to know how many people have appealed congestion charge fine for weekend breaches, not realising the congestion charge now applies at weekends too.

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TfL Ref: FOI-1490-2021

Thank you again for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 2 November 2020.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. You asked:

I would like to know how many congestion charge fine appeals have been received by TfL from people who have diverted due to the closure of Vauxhall Bridge and how many were upheld.

My second request is to know how many people have appealed congestion charge fine for weekend breaches, not realising the congestion charge now applies at weekends too.

There are six statutory grounds on which a representation can be accepted against Congestion Charging penalty charge notices (PCNs), but in addition we do also consider mitigating circumstances and exercise discretion outside of these grounds, where it is appropriate to do so. For example, if it is clear that a PCN has been issued as a result of a genuine customer error then we apply discretion.

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 considerably exceed the cost limit to provide a response to your current request. In order to locate and retrieve representations that were made on the grounds that you have listed above, we would need to manually review each individual representation we received during the requested time periods, and extract and collate those that met the requirements of your request, as we do not report on this.

We have received hundreds of representations since June/August. The process of reviewing each one would take considerably more than 18 hours and exceed the cost limit outlined above.

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 consider limiting your request to a much shorter period of time. Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.

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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