I am writing to make an open government request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please send me: - the total amount of TFL funds spent on Uber journeys - the total amount of TFL funds spent on Lyft journeys - the total amount of TFL funds spent on journeys in traditional black cabs or taxis I would like the above information to be provided to me electronically. If this request is too wide or unclear, I would be grateful if you could contact me as I understand that under the Act, you are required to advise and assist requesters. If any of this information is already in the public domain, please can you direct me to it, with page references and URLs if necessary. If the release of any of this information is prohibited on the grounds of breach of confidence, I ask that you supply me with copies of the confidentiality agreement and remind you that information should not be treated as confidential if such an agreement has not been signed. I understand that you are required to respond to my request within the 20 working days after you receive this letter. I would be grateful if you could confirm in writing that you have received this request. I look forward to hearing from you.

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TfL Ref: FOI-1559-1718

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 22 September 2017 asking for information about expenditure.

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 do hold the information you require. You asked for:

- The total amount of TFL funds spent on Uber journeys

- The total amount of TFL funds spent on Lyft journeys

- The total amount of TFL funds spent on journeys in traditional black cabs or taxis

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 appropriate limit to provide a response to this request. Whilst you haven’t specified a timeframe, to be able to answer this, we would first need to locate all of the expenses under the category of “Taxi”. Then, the only way to obtain the information you require would be to manually search through the receipts of these journeys to determine those which are covered by your request and collate them accordingly. This is because the way these claims are recorded does not differentiate between Taxi or Private Hire journeys, or even journeys that take place in London or elsewhere, and so only the receipt would be able to provide this detail. Such a task would take a considerable amount of time and vastly exceed the cost limit. Furthermore, the majority of receipts for claims made within the scope of your request are held in archive so these would need to be retrieved before they can be reviewed which would further increase the processing time of your request.

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. 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 and you might also consider limiting the time period covered by your request. We estimate that it will be possible to process your request within the cost limit if you were to narrow your timeframe and/or specify only those employees graded Managing Director.

You may be interested to note that we publish our Chief Officers’ expenses at the following link: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/chief-officers-expenses

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

Yours sincerely

Lee Hill

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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