Our ref: FOI-2396-2425/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 27 October 2024 asking for information about the change to taxi and private hire vehicle licensing requirements.
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.
The change to taxi and private hire vehicle licensing requirements you refer to is a Department for Transport Statutory Standard – that was itself subject to a consultation in 2019. Licensing authorities were expected to introduce the Statutory Standards unless they “had a compelling local reason not to do so”.
The introduction of the licensing requirement you ask about was subject to discussion over an extensive period of time:
In 2018 TfL consulted on a number of private hire vehicle (PHV) related safety measures. In the consultation we also sought views on establishing background character information on PHV driver licence applicants who had lived overseas for an extended period or who come to the UK from another country. You can find details of the consultation here: https://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-0388-2324/PHV%20Safety%20Consultation%20report%20v6.2.pdf
Alongside this activity TfL was also an active member of the DfT-led Task and Finish Group on taxi and private hire licensing – which shared a number of themes with the TfL consultation.
The Chair of the Task and Finish Group published a report with a number of recommendations in September 2018. You can review the report here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/745516/taxi-and-phv-working-group-report.pdf
The Government responded to this report in February 2019, please see: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/847315/taxi-task-and-finish-gov-repsonse.pdf
The Government simultaneously launched its own consultation on statutory guidance for licensing authorities: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/taxi-and-private-hire-vehicle-licensing-protecting-users
This subsequently led to the DfT's Statutory taxi and private vehicle standards in 2020 which discusses overseas convictions in section 4.10.
We then consulted on the implementation of some of these standards between February and May 2023. The consultation report is published here, please see page 16 – Section 4.1.2.5 Overseas convictions and Certificate of Good Conduct (DfT3).
Transport for London has had a requirement for applicants (and licensees) to produce a Certificates of Good Conduct in certain circumstances for many years, please see this Mayor's Question response from 2016 discussing overseas records checks.
You asked for: Copies of any emails or meeting notes relating to the decision to require overseas criminal checks (DfT3). Please provide this information in PDF or another machine-readable format.
I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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’.
During the years leading up to the Statutory Standard being introduced by the DfT, there was extensive communications internally, with the GLA, with the DfT and with stakeholders. A search for any relevant emails would result in thousands of ‘hits’.
While this would include duplicates or information which may not be relevant, each would need to be manually checked and compiled to answer your request. Separate manual searches would need to be carried out to identify if any meeting notes are held.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.
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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.
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
