Please can you provide me with annual figures from 2014-latest held for incidents of passengers/ other non-staff members accessing staff-only areas at stations on the London Underground/Overground/DLR. Can the data also please include a list of stations ranked by numbers of these incidents, and which of these incidents led to any injury for passengers/non staff members. By “staff only areas”, I mean any area in the station that passengers are not allowed to access — eg internal staff corridors, stairways, offices etc. This would not include any authorised access - eg a passenger being taken to an office if they are unwell. are you able to provide a separate line in the date relating to track incursions, or should I submit a fresh request?

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TfL Ref: FOI-1805-1920

Thank you for your revised email which we received on 22 September 2019 asking about incidents of track incursions and passengers accessing staff only areas at stations on the London Underground, Overground and DLR.

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

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 considerably exceed the cost to provide a response to your current request. Whilst we are able to report on incidents of track trespassing on the aforementioned modes, incidents of passengers accessing staff only areas, particularly on the London Underground, are more difficult to locate because they are not centrally held. These incidents, if they occur, would be recorded in LU’s individual incident reports, local records at LU stations or within the safe system in London Underground Control Centres (LUCC). In order to locate, retrieve and extract any incidents of passengers accessing staff only areas, someone would have to manually review the above records held across different areas, going back four years, to see if they contain the information you require. Whilst, these types of  incidents are better accessible for London Overground and DLR, we are applying a cost limit to your request as a whole to give you the opportunity to revise it.

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. You might consider limiting your request to only incidents of track incursions, shorter period of time, or focusing only on incidents of members of the public getting into non-public areas at London Overground and DLR stations.  

However, please note that information on access to non-staff areas, broken down by station and ranked by numbers of incidents, might be subject to an FOI exemption - section 38 – Health & Safety, as disclosure of this information would be likely to adversely affect the safety and security of TfL employees as well as members of the general public.

Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

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

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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