I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. - The number and type of complaints against black-cab drivers by month since January 2019. - The number and type of actions taken; including the number of referrals to other authorities, such as the police.

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TfL Ref: 1512-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20 August 2019 asking for information about complaints received about black cab drivers.

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. You asked:

I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

- The number and type of complaints against black-cab drivers by month since January 2019.

- The number and type of actions taken; including the number of referrals to other authorities, such as the police.

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 significantly exceed the cost limit to provide a response to your current request.

We carried out two searches of our customer service database to try and accurately extract the figures to answer the first part of your request. The first wider search looked at ‘complaints’ and ‘safety issues’ in the area of Taxi and Private Hire for the period 1 January 2019 to 31 July 2019. This produced 4742 cases, which captures a large number of cases not relevant to your request, due to the wide ranging search criteria.  A second, more specific search of complaints and safety issues in the Taxi and Private Hire area, using an additional filter of keywords “black cab” and “black taxi”, produced 1768 results. Again we would expect on further analysis that some of these cases would not be complaints about black cab drivers, but would include a reference of some type to ‘black cab’ or ‘black taxi’. Additionally, we might miss some contacts about black cab drivers if the customer had not used the exact words “black cab” and “black taxi” when contacting us.

Further to the above cost exemption, in order to answer the second part of your request would require us to manually review every complaint in detail against the complaint notes and then the driver file to establish whether further action or a referral was made as a result of the complaint. Therefore the cost exemption applies both collectively and individually to the above questions.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider substantially narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. We may be able to provide information using a keyword search (such as Taxi driver), however it remains possible that any such figure will include complaints regarding a private hire driver that happens to mention the term “taxi driver” in any context. Therefore any such result could not be considered completely accurate.

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. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

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

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Officer

Information Governance

Transport For London

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