TfL Ref: 2269-1819

Thank you for your email received by us on 28 November 2018 asking for information about engineering works on London Underground’s Metropolitan line.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. You asked for:

1) The exact completion date of the engineering works on the Metropolitan line which have been carried out each evening between Monday and Wednesday for the last two years. Please note, I want an exact date and replying with "Late 2018" is not acceptable.

2) The original completion date of these works. Again, I want an exact date, not a date range

Unfortunately, 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. There are several hundred ‘General Access’ bookings made every night, which is essentially a go anywhere, anytime blanket booking, which only indicates an intent to access our infrastructure. Therefore we would have to filter through all of our Service Control, Track Access Control and Station Access Reports to extract and review each and every type of engineering works of which there are several, which would then need to be collated into a suitable format for the purposes of your request.

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.

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. For example by specifying the type of engineering works you are interested in, such as signalling or track works and whether there was a particular section of the Metropolitan line you were interested in

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 us. 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 the organisation.

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 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