FOI request detail

Lessons learnt from Employment Tribunal Losses 2008-2016

Request ID: FOI-2330-1718
Date published: 22 February 2018

You asked

Hence, under the Freedom of Information Act, can you advise/release the following: 1) The costs incurred relate to time spent by TfL legal in defending the case 2) If the costs include other staff members time eg acting as witnesses, please confirm 3) If not already included can you confirm the external legal costs charged by the solicitors/barristers, as necessary. As stated, these costs seem repetitive as the reasons for each case are pretty much covered by discrimination & unfair dismissal. This causes further concern as a Public Authority you have a duty for more strenuous avoidance of discrimination within the workplace. In view of this: 1) What lessons have been learned, if any? I raise this question as disability discrimination was nearly the first reason as well as the last one on the combined list (using the ET Reference number to calculate this). 2) If lessons have been learned why is it not reaching all managers, in all divisions of TfL, although LUL seem to be particularly lax. Mr Kelly referred to a document headed Legal Compliance, dated 8 December 2015, including a link to it, which advised of the "training", amongst other actions, being taken to improve understanding of the Law. Noting that disability discrimination was once again a large number of cases. 3) From the ET decisions I have been able to get access to, a common thread on disability cases seems to be lack of reasonable adjustments or discussion of same. (Noting as such a large employer few costs would seem "unreasonable"). Why is this, if lessons are being learned? Not to mention it is the main way to ensure disability discrimination should never be an issue. 4) Is there not a point when your Legal department is automatically contacted when any sort of discrimination is raised? (I have assumed reference to Medical & HR departments is already done automatically) As disability discrimination is such a large issue can you also confirm: 1) How many staff in TfL are classified as disabled? I appreciate that to some extent that may be a notional figure as not all staff will wish any disability they have to be known. 2) How many staff have reasonable adjustments to allow them to do their job? 3) How many staff have been given flexible working over and above normal working hours? I do NOT need to know which part of the company have flextime as the norm. I am only interested in those who made a request for flexible working outwith normal, expected working hours/times. I believe the above three requests must be easy to find as I believe you have to report on this to the Government, periodically, to ensure compliance with the various regulations relating to them. If there is a point in time that would be easier to provide eg the last feedback to the relevant Government department, I am more than happy with this. Similarly, if there is anything else regarding any other point raised that will reduce the work-time but still give me the majority of my request(s), I am more than happy to discuss via this forum.

We answered

Our ref: FOI-2330-1617

Thank you for your email received on 4 December 2017 asking for information about lessons learnt from Employment Tribunal Losses 2008-2016.

Your request has been processed in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.

Unfortunately, to provide you with 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 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 exceed the cost limit to provide a response to your current request as there are hundreds of files to manually go through to establish the reasonable adjustments made for staff following disability discrimination tribunal cases.

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 see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Melissa Nichols

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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