How many overground west croydon bound trains get diverted to crystal Palace in the last 2 years? And the reasons why?

---

TfL Ref: FOI-2018-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 4^th October 2019 asking for information about diverted London Overground services.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

Specifically you asked:

“How many overground west croydon bound trains get diverted to crystal Palace in the last 2 years? And the reasons why?”.

I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, we estimate that to answer your questions would exceed the costs limit for responding to FOI cases set out in section 12 of the FOI Act. Under section 12 of the Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, and then locating, retrieving or extracting it from other information, would exceed the appropriate limit of £450. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described – equivalent to 18 hours work.

There is no easy way for TfL to locate the information you have requested. The information is not already collated, nor is it possible for an automated report to be run. Rather, somebody would have to review all records of services to West Croydon in the period in question, noting those that reported at Sydenham and were then diverted to Crystal Palace rather than carrying on to West Croydon. There are 74 services scheduled to terminate at West Croydon per day, and approximately 360 days that a service is run per year. Therefore, to source the raw data alone would require the manual checking of 53,280 individual service records (74 services per day x 360 days per year x 2 years). Even if this could be achieved at a rate of one service every ten seconds, that would equate to 148 hours work, well in excess of the 18 hour threshold. Furthermore, to answer your question as to why services were diverted would require further work still.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing or reframing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking, noting the explanations provided above.

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

Yours sincerely,

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

Back to top

---