Request ID: FOI-2166-2425 Date published: 24 October 2024
You asked
How many FOIs have been refused, on the ground of cost and enforcement/secrecy reasons?
How much money has been spent on crafting all responses to my original FOI, as of 07.10.2024?
We answered
Our ref: FOI-2166-2425/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7 October 2024 asking for information about TfL’s handling of Freedom of information requests.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold some of the information you require.
How many FOIs have been refused, on the ground of cost and enforcement/secrecy reasons?
We are not clear what you are referring to with regards to “enforcement/security reasons” and so do not have any information to provide on this. Please clarify precisely the information you require and we can process this as appropriate. However I can confirm that over the 2023/24 financial year, 67 per cent of the 4,540 FOI and EIR requests received were responded to in full, with 12 per cent relying on a partial exemption and 21 per cent being refused in full due to an applicable exemption.
Section 12 of the FOI Act provides an exemption from disclosure of information where the authority estimates that the cost of complying with a request would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is set out in Regulation 3 of the Fees Regulations and, for TfL, is set at £450. Regulation 4(4) states that the cost of the time which you expect to spend dealing with a request must be estimated at a rate of £25 per hour. This means a request would exceed the appropriate limit if complying would take more than 18 hours. More information on this can be found at the following link: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/section-12-requests-where-the-cost-of-compliance-exceeds-the-appropriate-limit/
The number of FOI requests processed, the number of section 12 refusals and this figure presented as a proportion of the total FOI requests processed since 2021/22 can be seen below.
FOI requests processed
FOI requests in which s12 has applied
Proportion of cases resulting in s12
2021/22
2578
193
7.4%
2022/23
3099
265
8.5%
2023/24
3659
297
8.1%
2024/25* (as at 10 October 2024)
1579
122
7.7%
How much money has been spent on crafting all responses to my original FOI, as of 07.10.2024? We do not hold this information. Whilst an estimated time for processing a request can be created for the purposes of applying a cost exemption, we do not otherwise routinely record this information.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
