TfL Reference: FOI-2157-1617
Thank you for your emails received by us on 1, 7 and 21 February 2017 asking for various information about Private Hire drivers.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our Information Access Policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require
Your Freedom of Information request asked for:
• The number of private hire drivers who failed to inform us within 21 days of having received a criminal conviction or caution.
• The number of private hire drivers who were licensed despite having failed to inform us within 21 days of having receiving a conviction or caution.
To ensure the safety of the travelling public taxi and private hire drivers must meet a range of strict criteria to ensure they are of good character. This is assessed on the basis of an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, information provided by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and any other information that comes to our attention.
Licensed drivers are also obliged to notify us within 21 days if they been disqualified from driving or have been cautioned, charged, or convicted of any criminal offence - including any road traffic offences. This requirement is clearly stated in the letter that accompanies all driver licences.
Once a decision on a driver's application has been made the results of the DBS check have to be destroyed. This is in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice which has statutory backing. Therefore, we do not hold all details of convictions and cautions and only those that have been declared to us by the driver.
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, as we would have to check in excess of 117,000 individual electronic records.
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 this would take a 19, 500 hours to collate this data.
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 Transport for London. 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, geographical area or specific departments of TfL.
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.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely
Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London
