Please can I request under the Freedom of Information Act the following information in relation to the Private Finance Initiative contract(s) struck by yourselves (or your predecessor organisations): 1) For each contract, the projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, detailed when the scheme was first agreed (i.e. the original projected cost of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme). 2) The projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, as at August 1, 2019 (i.e. the real cost for previous years and projected cost for future years of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme). If there is a difference between 1 and 2, please can you provide details of: A) The date(s) the projected costs changed B) The reason(s) the projected costs changed Please can I also request: 3) A copy of the original contract/agreement; 4) An itemised list of any payments made to the PFI contractors for services not included in the original PFI deal, from the beginning of the deal to the current date, and to include exact details of what was being paid for. If the following request cannot be met within cost limits, please can you provide me with guidance and assistance on how I may refine my request.

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TfL Ref: 1586-1920

Thank you for your emails received by us on 23 August and clarified on 18 September 2019 asking for information about various Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts.

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

the following PFI schemes for which you were the lead authority:

Connect(construction completed 23/12/2008)

A13 Thames Gateway DBFO Contract (contract understood to have been signed 12/4/2000)

British Transport Police(construction completed 1/9/2002)

DLR Lewisham(construction completed 1/11/1999)

1) For each contract, the projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, detailed when the scheme was first agreed (i.e. the original projected cost of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme).

2) The projected total (whole life) cost of the scheme, in £, as at August 1, 2019 (i.e. the real cost for previous years and projected cost for future years of all Unitary Charge Payments over the full life of the scheme).

If there is a difference between 1 and 2, please can you provide details of:

A) The date(s) the projected costs changed

B) The reason(s) the projected costs changed

Please can I also request:

3) A copy of the original contract/agreement;

4) An itemised list of any payments made to the PFI contractors for services not included in the original PFI deal, from the beginning of the deal to the current date, and to include exact details of what was being paid for.

If the following request cannot be met within cost limits, please can you provide me with guidance and assistance on how I may refine my request.

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.

This is because both the DLR and Connect agreements consist of contractual documentation spanning 20 years that would need to be extracted, scrutinised and suitably formatted to fulfil your request in its entirety. In addition, the A13 Thames Gateway DBFO Contract has over two hundred Additional Works Notices (AWNs) that have been issued since 2000, which would also need to be reviewed and put together solely in response to Question Four 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, by limiting your request to Questions One to Four for the British Transport Police PFI Contract and Questions 3 for the A13 Thames Gateway and DLR contracts for example. 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 as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London

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