1) Can you tell me how much was spent in TFL's most up to date financial year by TFL's Taxi and Private Hire department on taxi expenses? 2) Can you please break these taxi expenses down month-by-month? 3) Can you please also tell me which taxi firm was used? i.e. was it a black cab, Uber or other firm? 4) Can you also please give me the same data for the year before?

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TfL Ref: FOI-1570-1718, FOI-1608-1718, FOI-1609-1718 and FOI-1618-1718

Thank you for your emails received by us on 22 September 2017.

Your requests have 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 following:

FOI-1570-1718

1) Regarding the decision by TFL to not renew Uber’s licence in London, is it possible to get a full copy of the minutes of the TFL meeting when TFL arrived at that decision? And also the minutes of any other meetings which relate to the decision not to renew Uber’s licence in London?

2) Can you please send me a full list of the TFL executives who made the decision not to renew Uber’s licence in London?

3) Can you please tell me how many complaints you received against Uber drivers in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017?

For each of these can you tell me the nature of the complaint? Whether the complaint was made by male, female, person under 18? And can you tell me whether the complaint was handed over to the police?

FOI-1608-1718

1) Can you tell me how many meetings have taken place between Uber executives and TFL in the past 12 months?

2) Can you tell me for each of the meetings who was present from Uber and who was present from TFL?

3) Can you please give me an overview of what was discussed in these meetings? Where they took place? And can you also give me details of anybody else who attended those meetings?

FOI-1609-1718

For Chief Officers,

1) How much each executive expensed on taxi fares in the year ending August 2017, or if the most up to date yearly information you have?

2) For each executive, can you break down the figures, so that it shows each taxi firm? EG, whether black cab or Uber or other firm?

3) Can you provide this data in monthly forms, so it shows a breakdown of the taxi expenses for each individual executive month by month?

4) Can you also provide the data asked for in Q1 for 2016 too and also in monthly form?

FOI-1618-1718

1) Can you tell me how much was spent in TFL's most up to date financial year by TFL's Taxi and Private Hire department on taxi expenses?

2) Can you please break these taxi expenses down month-by-month?

3) Can you please also tell me which taxi firm was used? i.e. was it a black cab, Uber or other firm?

4) Can you also please give me the same data for the year before?

Unfortunately, to provide all of 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.

In relation to FOI-1609-1718 and FOI-1618-1718, 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, different directorates, 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.

Furthermore, the information requested in FOI-1570-1718 includes details of complaints dating back five years. Many of the complaints that are relevant to your request would actually be categorised under driver complaints rather then being linked to a specific operator and so we would need to manually review thousands of complaints within this time period to determine whether they relate to Uber. Additionally, we have not historically separated Uber complaints from other Private Hire complaints and so we have no way of directly retrieving those which meet the requirements of your request and so further manual reviewing would be necessary.

Please note that under Regulation 5(2) of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004, we are permitted to aggregate requests where they relate to any extent to the same or similar information, and we consider that this is the case with your requests in that they relate to the functions of the Taxi & Private Hire directorate. This aggregation applies to any requests that are received within a sixty working day period. I think it is only fair to inform you that, once we receive your clarification, if we process your requests up to the cost limit of £450, then we would not be obliged to respond to any similar FOI requests for a period of sixty working days. However, this would not apply to requests for unrelated information.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider prioritising the information you require so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For example you may wish to request only the information covered by FOI-1608-1718 or FOI-1609-1718 which we are more likely to be able to answer within the cost limit.

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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