Request ID: FOI-1714-2223 Date published: 11 November 2022
You asked
- Since 1 October 2019, on how many days have all four escalators serving Cutty Sark DLR station been in operation;
- Since 1 October 2019, on how many full working days have engineers been on site to attend to the inoperable escalators at the same station;
- The actual and projected costs of repair of all four escalators to full service;
- Any and all correspondence between TFL, Keolis Amey, and/or the Mayor of London’s office connected with the operation or repair of Cutty Sark Station escalators over the period 1 October 2019 to 1 October 2022.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-1714-2223
Thank you for your request received on 17 October 2022 asking for information about the escalators at Cutty Sark DLR station.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require. You asked:
• Since 1 October 2019, on how many days have all four escalators serving Cutty Sark DLR station been in operation
TfL became responsible for the maintenance of the escalators at Cutty Sark station in April 2021, we do not hold information prior to this date. All maintenance since the station opened in 1999 to early 2021 was undertaken by City Greenwich Lewisham (CGL) Rail, under the Private Finance Initiative that funded the extension of the DLR to Greenwich and Lewisham. Please note that the information below is up to the date of your request (17 October 2022).
o Escalator one has been in service for: 551 days between April 2021 and October 2022 o Escalator two has been in service for: 234 days between April 2021 and November 2021 when it was removed from service following a failure which was related to the requirement for the recent overhaul. o Escalator three has been in service for 417 days between April 2021 and October 2022. This escalator was out of service between July and October 2022 following a failure rectified in the recent overhaul. o Escalator four has been in service for: 542 days between April 2021 and October 2022
Escalator and lift replacement and refurbishment works can be a lengthy process due to the size and difficulty of the task. Each escalator is bespoke due to the different composition of all of the stations on our network so the build time can be lengthy depending on the location. There was also an initial delay to the works being carried out as we had to wait for replacement components to arrive. Work on Escalator 3 commenced in March 2022, and once completed work began on Escalator 2.
• Since 1 October 2019, on how many full working days have engineers been on site to attend to the inoperable escalators at the same station
Engineers have attended site on 65 separate occasions since April 2021. These visits were for various outages and reasons, and therefore we are not able to attribute the number of visits to each escalator asset or confirm if the engineer was on site for a full working day or not. Since the removal of escalators two and three for overhaul works, engineers have been on site every day excluding weekends.
• The actual and projected costs of repair of all four escalators to full service
The current contract value is at £691,681 for the four escalators, we are approximately halfway through the works. This is a fixed price, however there is potential for it to increase dependent on the asset condition of the remaining two escalators.
• Any and all correspondence between TFL, Keolis Amey, and/or the Mayor of London’s office connected with the operation or repair of Cutty Sark Station escalators over the period 1 October 2019 to 1 October 2022.
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.
We have estimated that it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information for this part of your request.
When requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case Management team are able to conduct a companywide email searches using keywords, dates and email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once.
We have done an initial search for all emails held by TfL sent/received to Keolis Amey and/or the Mayor’s Office regarding the escalators at Cutty Sark station. This has returned over 2,300 hits. A brief review of the results suggests that the majority of these appear to be general circulars of daily updates about lift statuses across the network. We would need to manually review all of the emails identified by the search in order to extract and collate the relevant emails.
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. Please note that we have answered several FOI requests on this topic and it may be helpful for you to take a look at these responses before submitting a revised request:
If you want to refine your request or make a FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI 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 narrowing the time period requested.
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.
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please feel free to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
