Request ID: FOI-1939-2122 Date published: 17 December 2021
You asked
In the year 2017, how many complaints were made to TFL by blind transport users?
In the year 2018, how many complaints were made to TFL by blind transport users?
In the year 2019, how many complaints were made to TFL by blind transport users?
In the year 2020, how many complaints were made to TFL by blind transport users?
In the year 2021, how many complaints were made to TFL by blind transport users?
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-1939-2122
Thank you for your request received on 29 November 2021 asking for information about complaints made by visually impaired transport users.
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 over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
We do not ask customers to declare if they are visually impaired when they contact us, therefore we have carried out a word search using terms such as “impairment”, “partially sighted”, “assistance dog”, and “visually impaired”. We have received over 5000 queries with these terms over the requested timeframe, however we would need to manually review all of these queries in order to determine whether they were relevant to your request. Additionally, we may have received queries from visually impaired transport users who make no reference to their impairment so any information we may be able to provide may not be a complete representation.
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.
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.
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
