Request ID: FOI-2071-2324 Date published: 10 October 2023
You asked
Please can you supply under Freedom of Information copies of any correspondence (email, letter, text, whatsapp or other electronic communication between the Taxi and Private Hire policy team, any TfL or GLA employee or elected or appointed person appertaining to the:
“concerns TfL have raised regarding cross border hiring and the continuous lobbying of Government TfL say they have undertaken since 2018 for a change in primary legislation that is required to address this issue” as referenced in Dan Maskell's email reply to myself dated 5 September 2023.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-2071-2324 Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 13th September 2023 asking for information about cross border hiring. 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 can you supply under Freedom of Information copies of any correspondence (email, letter, text, whatsapp or other electronic communication between the Taxi and Private Hire policy team, any TfL or GLA employee or elected or appointed person appertaining to the: “concerns TfL have raised regarding cross border hiring and the continuous lobbying of Government TfL say they have undertaken since 2018 for a change in primary legislation that is required to address this issue” as referenced in Dan Maskell's email reply to myself dated 5 September 2023.” I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid it is not possible to source it 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 required 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 the information has not been collated before and there is no quick or efficient way of doing so. For example, you have asked for “any correspondence” between our Taxi and Private Hire team and any other “TfL or GLA employee” on a subject matter that goes back to 2018. We have conducted a search of all TfL email correspondence since 2018 containing the phrase “Cross Border Hiring’ which has returned over 60,000 hits. Not all of these will necessarily fall within the scope of your request, which was specifically for material “appertaining to the...“concerns TfL have raised regarding cross border hiring and the continuous lobbying of Government TfL say they have undertaken since 2018 for a change in primary legislation that is required to address this issue”. The only way for us to determine which of these emails do and do not fall within the scope of the request would be for us to review them individually. Given the numbers involved this is not possible within the £450 limit. In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to reframe it to narrow its scope. That said, we have identified some relevant material which may be of assistance and provide context to our views on cross border hiring. We published a policy paper as part of our submission to the Department for Transport’s (DfT) Taxi and Private Hire Task and Finish Working Group that was established in late 2017. This paper sets out our concerns and includes recommendations for legislative change to address issues of cross border hiring. There is also a letter (attached) which was sent to the Department for Transport in September 2023 which maintains our view that a change to legislation is required to address this issue.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed. Yours sincerely, David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
