Our Ref:        FOI-2142-2425

Thank you for your request received on 6 October 2024 asking for information about trade unions.

Your request has been processed in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold the requested information. 

We work with the unions and always strive to have a constructive and professional relationship, recognising the vital role they play within the organisation at all levels. This includes negotiations and consultation activities, as well as supporting their members on individual issues. Our unions continue to make a valuable contribution to the health, safety and wellbeing of our staff, with union health and safety representatives throughout the company. Representatives also play an active role in equality and learning matters.

You asked for:

2.         Do you deduct trade union subscriptions for any of your employees via payroll (sometimes known as the "check off" system)? If so, do you charge a fee to the trade unions concerned for providing this service? 

I can confirm that we do allow for “check off” for some of our trade unions. A 4% commission is calculated and deducted from the payments that are made to each of the unions we provide that facility for.

3.         With regard to trade union facility time, please provide the total cost of facility time from your pay bill for the financial year 2023/24 and the budget for the current financial year. Please also advise the current number of employees that you fund to be union officials, measured as full time equivalents? (For guidance on definitions please refer to the Government's Transparency Code for local government: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-government-transparency-code-2015/local-government-transparency-code-2015)

Trade unions play an important role across London ensuring workers are treated fairly at work. In many cases we are legally required to allow representatives paid time off to carry out union duties. This information is published in our Annual Reports: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/annual-report

These details can be found on page 99 of the current report. The 2023/24 report will be published in due course. 

1.         The details of any office accommodation your organisation provides to staff to carry out trade union business. Please include details of:

•           space measured in square feet

•           how much of this space is contained within entirely separate buildings (i.e. occupied solely by staff carrying out trade union business)

•           whether a professional valuation of the market rental value of the space has been sought either in-house or externally, and if so, what the valuation of the space was

•           any charges the council levy for office space given to trade unions.

4.         Please advise any estimates for other costs met for those staff on trade union facility time apart from salaries - including travel expenses, office supplies, telephone expenses and energy bills.

We operate on neighbourhood working principles, this means that the majority of office space is shared and can be used by any member of staff. None of these spaces would be occupied by staff solely conducting trade union activities, therefore we do no hold information on the square feet or market value of these.

Similarly, we do not record items such as office supplies or energy bills separately for trade union activities. These would be part of the costs of normal business operations. To provide this information and the remaining information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by FOI (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 it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. 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.

This information is not held centrally and it would be an onerous task to initially identify staff who had carried out trade union activities. This in itself would be a lengthy process as you have not provided a timeframe and it is likely that these staff will have changed over any given period of time. We would then need to identify any locations in which they had conducted these activities and any supplies or other expenses they had incurred. This would require consulting several teams which may hold this information, after the initial attempt to identify those captured by your 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. If you want to refine your request or make a FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI 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. 

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.

Yours sincerely 

Gemma Jacob

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

[email protected]