Request ID: FOI-1905-2425 Date published: 26 September 2024
You asked
Dear TFL Information Team,
Please could you tell me how many people fainted on the tube network from 2022 to 2023 in each year?
If at all possible, could you also stratify this by either month or season?
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-1905-2425
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11th September 2024 asking for data on instances of passengers fainting on the London Underground. Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“Please could you tell me how many people fainted on the tube network from 2022 to 2023 in each year?
If at all possible, could you also stratify this by either month or season?”.
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid it is not possible to provide this data within the costs limit for responding to FOI cases, as set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
In this instance the exemption applies because there is no quick, efficient or automated way of determining from our records how many people “fainted” on the network. Rather, in order to find that out, we would have to manually review over 28,000 individual incident reports that are held for the timeframe in question. This is not possible within the costs limit.
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to consider reframing it or narrowing its scope. Note that we have previously provided similar information in relation to the more general category of “slips, trips and falls”, such as can be seen in this previous request published on the FOI pages of our website:
