Dear Sirs I note that your notice of December 2015, signed by Helen Chapman, declares that e-cigarettes are banned in all taxi and private hire vehicles. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/11-15-smoking-e-cigarettes-policy.pdf Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following: 1) On what scientific basis of harm to users of e-cigarettes or those in close proximity to users, if any, was this decision based? 2) Did the decision take into account a comprehensive review by Public Health England of August 2015 which stated that e-cigarettes created "negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders"? https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/457102/Ecigarettes_an_evidence_update_A_report_commissioned_by_Public_Health_England_FINAL.pdf 3) Please provide minutes of meetings where this policy was discussed and/or decided. 4) Please provide copies of electronic correspondence where the ban on e-cigarettes was discussed and/or decided. I look forward to your reply within the statutory timeframe of 21 days.

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TfL Ref: 1753-1718

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 4 October 2017 asking for information about our policy on e-cigarettes in taxi and private hire vehicles.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.  

We have checked with our taxi and private hire services and we have been advised that the policy to ban the use of electronic or e-cigarettes in taxi and private hire vehicles was an extension of our published conditions of carriage, rather than a decision taken in isolation, which was designed to make the position in taxis and PHVs consistent with that across the whole transport network.  The conditions of carriage state are available here: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-conditions-of-carriage.pdf.

We can carry out a further email search of our taxi and private hire services to see if any further detailed information is held, however please be mindful that reviewing the outcome of email searches is quite labour intensive, and this may mean that the cost of complying with any request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees Regulations 2004), and therefore would not be provided. This is because 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. Because we add together the costs of answering similar requests, conducting such a search may mean that we wouldn’t process any similar requests from you received within 60 working days.

Having established that the decision is related to the conditions of carriage, we now consider we should consult with you before carrying out further searches. We can conduct an email search within our taxi and private hire department. Alternatively, you could submit a new request for information held in connection with the decision to change the conditions of carriage which we are referring to, which would focus on the decision making across TFL. You could also request that searches to fulfil both our above suggestions be initiated, but please be aware that we would combine the time taken for us to extract any relevant information from those searches, and this would make it more likely that the overall cost would exceed the cost limit resulting in both requests being refused. We look forward to hearing from you further if you would like to progress any of the options described as above.

If this is not the information you are looking for,  please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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