Our ref: FOI-1691-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 22 August 2024 asking for information about staff medical reviews.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. 

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

For example, to provide the Drug and Alcohol Assessment and Treatment Service (DAATS) data from the beginning of the program would require a review of many HR systems spanning over 20+ years. Please note that, DAATS will request an employee to attend for a liver function test if the manager expresses concerns or the DAATS team have any safety concerns. Additionally, a review of individual files, including archived material and archived employee records will be required to review whether the ‘disciplinary’ involved ‘drug and alcohol’ and again a ‘liver function test’ which also does not include counting people's individual hard copy personnel files. Thus, this would take a considerable amount of time and would exceed the cost limit to extract and compile the information you have requested.

To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you. 

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does 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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics, we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Tahsin Prima

FOI Case Officer

General Counsel

Transport for London