I would be grateful if you would supply me the following information. For the week ending Sunday 25/10/20 Please provide me the number of Private Hire Vehicles who’s vehicle licence had expired and were unable to renew due to reaching their age limit, also the number of vehicles who’s yearly licensed had expired with the owner taking the decision not to renew (I.e. the number of vehicles that could renew but are currently unlicensed) Of the combined numbers above, please provide me with the number of ph identification roundels that have been surrendered/recovered from those, now unlicensed vehicles.

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TfL Ref: FOI-2089-2021

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16 January 2021, asking for information about private hire vehicle licences.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. You asked;

Please provide me the number of Private Hire Vehicles who’s vehicle licence had expired and were unable to renew due to reaching their age limit, also the number of vehicles who’s yearly licensed had expired with the owner taking the decision not to renew (I.e. the number of vehicles that could renew but are currently unlicensed).

Of the combined numbers above, please provide me with the number of ph identification roundels that have been surrendered/recovered from those, now unlicensed vehicles.

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 providing a response to your last question alone, specifically asking for the number of recovered vehicle licenses, would considerably exceed the cost limit. This is because recovered vehicle licences are recorded individually on each vehicle licence record. In order to provide you with the number that have been recovered, we would have to manually check several hundred records. In addition, providing the information you require in the first part of your request would of course increase the processing time required to complete your request. Therefore we have applied section 12 exemption to your whole 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. We should be able to provide the number of vehicles unable to relicense because they didn’t meet our vehicle age limit and emission requirements, the number of private hire vehicles that could’ve renewed their vehicle licence but haven’t and the number of vehicles that have surrendered their licence, within the cost limit.  

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

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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