Our Ref: FOI-2122-2425 / FOI-2123-2425
Thank you for your requests received on 6 October 2024 asking for correspondence associated with our response to Members Correspondence "RE: Bus death data query" sent 1 October 2024 on behalf of Caroline Russell AM and correspondence associated with the Bus Safety Performance data we published in September 2024.
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require.
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 it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current requests. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested. We are now applying an aggregate cost limit to the outstanding requests which we received on 6 October 2024.
It should be noted that currently we are unable to conduct remote searches for emails and so the process of locating emails is entirely manual, consisting of searches conducted by individuals that may or may not hold relevant material. Through an initial manual search for sampling purposes we have identified approximately 500 emails that may be relevant to your requests. However it is probable that additional emails are held in other areas of the organisation that were not identified through this manual search which would increase the volume of material requiring review further. We would need to manually review all of the emails identified in order to extract and collate the relevant emails. In many cases it will not be immediately obvious whether emails regarding bus safety data was directly relevant to the specific matters you are interesting in and so a period of detailed review on each email and any associated attachment would be necessary. We estimate that conducting this process would exceed the cost limit set out above.
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 and make a single request on a topic, focusing on a question or document of interest rather than broad requests for correspondence, in order to make the best use of the processing time available to you under the FOI Act.
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 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]
