TfL Ref: FOI-2120-1617

Thank you for your email received by us on 30 January 2017 asking for information about transfer of staff from the GLA to TFL.

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. You asked:

I made the following request to GLA and they have answered part 1 (which is below) and suggest I request TFL to answer parts 2, 3 & 4 as they do not hold the information. The questions were:-

As part of the Shared Services agenda staff from GLA joined TFL. This included staff in Finance, Procurement and legal services. I would like to know the following information:-

How many staff transferred to TFL?
Of those how many retain GLA employment Terms and Conditions?
How many staff have received a payment to transfer to TFL T&Cs?
For staff who entered at TFL structure Band 3 and 4 what was their Band at GLA?

Answer How many staff transferred to TFL?
Legal 10
Procurement 4
Financial Services 3

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.

Answering the request would significantly exceed the appropriate limit because of its scope. We do not have a system that is capable of reporting on what company each person has TUPE transferred from and to manually review all information held since 2009 would take an excessive amount of time.

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. 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, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, or specific departments of the organisation.

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 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 as well as information on copyright.

Yours sincerely

Paulina Tuffour
FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London