Complaint raised with Customer Services re escalators at Wood Green Station. Customer didn't receive a response so now asks: Also under foi I would like a copy of all correspondence in relation to this matter.

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Our ref: FOI-2182-1920

Thank you for your recent requests received by Transport for London (TfL).

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 the information you require. We have identified the following emails where you have stated you are requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act:

Under the foi act can you tell me why escalators have been arranged in the manner in which they have.

In the morning, passengers come down the “north side” escalator. The passengers arriving at the station going north then have to cross the flow of passengers going south. Can you tell me why this solution was chosen?

As you are asking for an explanation, rather than for recorded information, this does not constitute a valid request in accordance with the FOI Act - 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.

Also under foi I would like a copy of all correspondence in relation to this matter.

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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

In order to search for ‘all correspondence’, we would need to carry out an email search across the entirety of our archived emails using the broad terms ‘Wood Green’ and ‘escalator’ for an undefined time period. Such a search would result in a huge number of emails being retrieved. Many of these would not be relevant to your request, but each of these would all need to be individually manually reviewed and a process of extraction applied to those that are relevant to your request in order to collate them into a format suitable to provide the information you have requested.

Can you tell me why the pink readers at platforms 1&2 at Stratford are not working?

I would like to know how long it will take to repair?

I would like to see all correspondence regarding this service failure.

Further to the above cost limit refusal, as your request has exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ we are also unable to consider any subsequent requests unless you are able to refine your requests to information which can be provided within a reasonable time limit and to allow you to concentrate on those matters which are of most importance to you. Section 12(4)(a) of the Act provides for the costs of complying with two or more requests made in a 60 working day period which are, to any extent, for the same or similar information to be combined. Section 12(4)(b) provides for requests made by different people acting in concert, or in pursuance of a campaign to be considered together under section 12. We consider these two requests to be sufficiently similar as to invoke section 12(4)(a).

It is unclear which information is of most value to you but you should consider refining your request to focus on a specific area of interest and limit the scope of your request to specific documentation which is more likely to be retrievable within the cost limit. As explained, where an explanation is sought, this would not constitute a request in accordance with the FOI Act, which allows for access to recorded information.

Requests for ‘all correspondence’, and in particular those which do not specify a timeframe, are likely to be refused. This is because there is a strong likelihood that these requests require very broad searches that unavoidably catch a significant volume of information, including irrelevant information, which require us to manually sift through. Guidance on section 12 can be seen here: https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Additionally, the ICO have published some helpful guidance on how to make the best use of the FOI Act, including general guidance on framing requests which you can find here: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/

Whilst the legislation allows you to make a Freedom of information request by contacting us via Customer Services, all FOI requests are processed by a centralised team within Information Governance and so in order to ensure the most efficient processing possible of your requests we strongly recommend you either submit them directly to us via [email protected] or via the webform available here: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-make-request. The above is echoed by the ICO in the opening entry in their “information request dos and don’ts” in the guidance above which states ‘DO - Find out who to send your request to. If you address your request directly to the appropriate contact within the authority then you may receive a prompter response.“

If you are not satisfied with this response 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

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