I request both internal communications within TfL and also between TfL and residents and/or local politicians regarding the need for a safe pedestrian crossing on the north side of Battersea Bridge at the Cheyne Walk (A3220/A3212) / Battersea Bridge Road (A3220) / Beaufort Street junction. I request in particular communications in which TfL cites traffic flow or cost or time considerations in relation to leaving the aforementioned crossing in its current state. This may or may not be in response to questions posed by members of the public, press or politicians in relation to the danger at the crossing. The time frame for communications is from the day prior to when you respond to his FOI request dating back a period of ten years.

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Our Ref:         FOI-2114-2021 / FOI-2115-2021

Thank you for your requests received on 20 January 2021 asking for information about the junction of Beaufort Street/Battersea Bridge with Cheyne Walk.

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 hold some of the information you require.

Vision Zero is at the heart of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy and reflects our fundamental belief that no death or serious injury on London’s road and transport network is acceptable or inevitable. The Vision Zero Action Plan, published by the Mayor of London, Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police Service in July 2018, details the evidence based actions we’re taking to eliminate death and serious injury from London’s streets by 2041.

Please note that the information you have requested regarding the collisions, traffic signals, and cameras in this area has been previously published in response to a FOI request (up to November 2019): https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-request-detail?referenceId=FOI-2527-1920

We have also recently launched the Vision Zero Dashboard which contains the requested collision data up to and including 2019: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/road-safety

However please be aware that, 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, which is set at £450. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described. Section 12(4)(a) of the Act provides for the costs of complying with two or more requests made in a 60 working day period which are, to any extent, for the same or similar information to be combined.

We have estimated that it would cost in excess of £450 to provide a response to your current requests. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile all of the information you have requested. We are now applying an aggregate cost limit to your two outstanding requests.

Any search for correspondence which we do in response to your requests is likely to produce several thousand results, largely because we would have to use the location as the first search term. Even if we were able to correctly identify all of the correspondence by location, we would still need to review it in order to ascertain whether it related to the provision of a pedestrian crossing. For any external correspondence, we have no way of determining whether the correspondence comes from residents as we do not require people to provide an address when contacting us. Any correspondence may be from people who have travelled to or through that area.

If the request was narrowed to communications that just cited traffic flow, cost, or time considerations in relation to leaving the crossing in its current state, we would still need to review all of the correspondence identified in order to determine if it was relevant.

By its nature, email correspondence contains a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses. Whilst the process of redaction does not feature as part of our considerations on whether the cost limit might apply, the burden created by non-specific requests for emails is significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting requests of this nature.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to prioritise the information you are most interested in order to make the best use of the processing time available to you under the FOI Act. Additionally, instead of requesting ‘all’ communications, if you have specific questions it may be easier to answer these, as suggested above.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does 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 feel free to contact me.

If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.

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

[email protected]

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