Our ref: FOI-1824-2425

Thank you for your request received on 5 September 2024 asking for information about private hire licensees.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. You asked: how many asylum seekers are presently holding a TFL private hire driver’s licence.

I can confirm that we hold the information you require, however to provide this information 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 over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

Please note that the way in which this data is recorded on our system has changed and in order for us to provide the figure for those drivers who presently hold a private hire driver's licence that you have requested, we would have to manually review over 100,000 driver licencing files to check the exact status of each applicant, which would significantly exceed the cost limit, noting that the information requested is not in a reportable format and this is the only way we can extract that data.

As part of our licensing criteria for taxi and private hire drivers, all applicants must provide evidence of their right to live and work in the UK. We work closely with the Home Office to ensure that we license drivers who meet this requirement. Where the evidence provided to us as part of an application is unclear or requires further investigation, further checks are carried out by a Home Office officer.

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. 

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.
 

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

Yours sincerely