TfL Ref: 1646-1819

Thank you for your email received by us on 19 September 2018 asking for information about the escalators at Cutty Sark Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. You asked for:

- details of each incident of escalator downtime at Cutty Sark station in the last 24 months: including cause, duration, and whether an engineer callout was required (the format of http://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-2416-1718/FOI-2416-1718%20%28LU%29.csv would be ideal)

I can advise that the DLR’s concessionaire CGL Rail manages the length of railway including stations between Mudchute and Lewisham, on behalf of TfL.

As requested, please see the attached PDF file listing the instances of escalator down time at Cutty Sark station over a two year period. The summary data we hold provides the date and time the outage was recorded and returned to service, as well as the length of the outage.

We would also like to highlight that the escalators at Cutty Sark did have some minor refurbishment work done earlier this year, with one escalator being repaired at a time. Our records show that the work started on 3 April 2018 and was completed on 15 June 2018 (Periods 1-3).

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’. of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described. We have identified that to extract further information regarding the cause, in addition to whether it was restarted by operational staff or whether an engineer call-out was required, would require a manual search of our fault log database that would take longer than 18 hours and so exceed the ‘appropriate limit’. This is because we would need to review the entire database for the identification of the escalator faults, which would then need to be collated and extracted in a suitable format.  Given the configurations of the database, it is not possible to download the requested data into a single file nor extract each record relating to Cutty Station in a more expedient manner. There is also no guarantee that all of the requested information would be held as this database is maintained by our concessionaire CGL Rail.

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, 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.

- the total cost of maintenance of Cutty Sark's escalators in the last 12 and 24 months, split between planned and unplanned maintenance

We do not hold this information. As previously mentioned, concessionaire CGL Rail is responsible for the maintenance of these assets and awards the contract directly. CGL Rail built the Lewisham extension, which includes Cutty Sark, and is responsible for its maintenance until 2021. If you would like to contact CGL Rail directly, please see their website at http://cglrail.co.uk/. However, please note that as a private company, CGL Rail is not legally obligated to respond under FOI legislation.

-details of each incident of escalator downtime across the Tube, DLR, and Overground network for the last 24 months (an updated version of http://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-2416-1718/FOI-2416-1718%20%28LU%29.csv would be ideal)

Please see the attached PDF file.

- the total cost of maintenance of the Tube, DLR, and Overground network's escalators in the last 12 and 24 months, split between planned and unplanned maintenance

In reference to the DLR, please see our response to Question Two.

Escalator maintenance costs are published in the various contract agreements we have listed with those such as Kone, C.A.T.E.R. Schindler and Otis to manage these assets at: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-contracts-greater-than-5k.pdf

In accordance with section 21 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to supply you with a copy of the requested information as it is already accessible to you elsewhere.

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, 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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