Request ID: FOI-1996-2223 Date published: 09 December 2022
You asked
I would like the following information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000 in respect of the attached email sent to the Senior Reps of the Taxi and PHV Trade organisations on 2 February 2022:
• · DfT Statutory Standards and TFL’s response and links to updated driver and vehicle policy documents that reflect the Statutory Standards.
All documents including any draft emails to Senior Reps prepared but not sent and any draft TPH Notices appertaining to the paragraph highlighted in yellow in the attached email during the period 1 October 2021 to 1 March 2023.
Documents including but not limited to emails, meeting notes and policy documents.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-1996-2223
Thank you for your request received on 14 November 2022 asking for information about Department for Transport (DfT) Statutory taxi and private hire vehicle (PHV) standards.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require. You asked for:
I would like the following information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000 in respect of the attached email sent to the Senior Reps of the Taxi and PHV Trade organisations on 2 February 2022:
• DfT Statutory Standards and TFL’s response and links to updated driver and vehicle policy documents that reflect the Statutory Standards.
The DfT Statutory Standards are published on their website:
• All documents including any draft emails to Senior Reps prepared but not sent and any draft TPH Notices appertaining to the paragraph highlighted in yellow in the attached email during the period 1 October 2021 to 1 March 2023. Documents including but not limited to emails, meeting notes and policy documents.
We do not hold any draft emails or draft TPH Notices regarding the paragraph highlighted in the attached email during the period 1 October 2021 to 1 March 2023.
Unfortunately, to provide the remainder of your request for all documents 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.
This information is not held centrally or in a way that allows it to be easily identified, located, or extracted. We are able to do a search for correspondence that is held by TfL using relevant keywords, however a similar search cannot be done on documents such as meeting minutes or policy documents. We would need to do a search across several departments to try to identify the relevant information. Any information identified would then need to be reviewed to determine whether it was captured by your request.
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. For example, you may wish to narrow the timeframe of your request.
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 should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can.
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
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
