Hi I'd like to request all correspondence in 2017 between TFL and Licensed Taxi Drivers Association Ltd London Cab Drivers Club RMT Taxi Drivers Branch UNITE the Union's Cab section

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TfL Ref: FOI-1564-1718

Thank you for your clarified request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 25 September 2017 asking for correspondence.

                   

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.

However, we are refusing your request under section 14(1) of the Act. After reviewing a sample of our records we consider that providing the requested information would place an unreasonable burden on us. Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering this request would represent a disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance states that one of the indicators of a request which may fall under section 14(1) is that it “appears to be part of a completely random approach, lacks any clear focus, or seems to have been solely designed for the purpose of ‘fishing’ for information without any idea of what might be revealed.”

The ICO guidance provides the following examples of a ‘fishing expedition’ request which may fall under section 14(1) if it:

- Imposes a burden by obliging the authority to sift through a substantial volume of information to isolate and extract the relevant details;

- Encompasses information which is only of limited value because of the wide scope of the request;

- Creates a burden by requiring the authority to spend a considerable amount of time considering any exemptions and redactions.

Our view is that all three of these examples apply in this instance. Your request covers every instance of an email being sent or received by a TfL employee from various trade orgs since January regarding that references Uber in any way. We conducted a remote search using the parameters you provided which was stopped at around a third of the way through having gathered over 900 hits. It is not unreasonable to conclude that, had the search been allowed to continue, the total number of emails caught by the search would have been at least double this figure. A brief review of these results show that this would include a significant volume of duplicate emails, due to one or more trade org or TfL employee being involved in any given email chain. However it is likely that, even after the manual process of de-duplicating the results, the total number would still be significant.

Reviewing these emails to de-duplicate them would be a significant task since several different email chains may originate from a single email. By its nature, we feel this wide ranging and non-specific request will very likely encompass information which is only of limited value. In that respect, it is noteworthy that your request is not for information on any specific subject or issue. Given the nature of correspondence, it is likely that it would be necessary to spend a significant amount of time considering exemptions which might be applicable to the information caught by the request, not least in respect of personal data which would be contained in email addresses and other contact details throughout the correspondence.

We consider the burden of retrieving, reviewing and redacting the information would be disproportionate to the benefit of providing it. Therefore, due to the wide and unfocused scope of your request, we are refusing it under s.14 of the FOI Act. If you would like to re-submit a more focused, specific request then we will, of course, consider it. For example, a request for information on a particular, specific, subject or issue contained in correspondence exchanged between named individuals over a limited period of time is less likely to raise concerns about the disproportionate effort required to answer it.

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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