Our Ref:         FOI-1850-2021

Thank you for your request received on 14 December 2020 asking for information about operational managerial appointments in London Underground.

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 do hold the information you require.

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 in excess of £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.

Due to the way in which this information is recorded we are not able to identify or extract this information easily. You have requested information on the number of appointments to any managerial role within London Underground’s Operational Environment, where the appointee entered that managerial grade from a non-managerial grade within TfL. However, this Is not clearly defined within SAP, particularly if people have come from areas outside of London Underground. In order to obtain the requested information we would need to identify anyone in a managerial grade and then review their entire record for those without a management job/grade in their history. This would have to be done for each year requested, discounting any prior year occurrences.

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. If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You might consider limiting your request to Customer Service and Line Operations as these would be easier to identify, particularly if you are enquiring about specific roles such as Train Operations Manager, Area Manager, Customer Service Supervisor etc., as certain roles have natural progression paths. Other areas such as Assets would be more difficult to obtain detail for, particularly following the Fit for Future changes where a large number of roles changed.

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 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.

If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.

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

[email protected]