TfL Ref: FOI-2419-2425
Thank you for your clarified request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 1 November 2024 asking for information about private hire driver licence revocations.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require.
We have previously published taxi and private hire revocations in response to information requests, which are available on our website using the following links:
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-request-detail?referenceId=FOI-2947-2223 (2022 revocations).
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-request-detail?referenceId=FOI-3851-2324 (2023 revocations).
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. 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.
We can check the status of a driver’s licence to determine whether it is active, suspended or revoked. While we retain snapshots of our licensing database for revocations as outlined in the links provided above, we do not have a specific system for identifying whether drivers have subsequently been re-licensed after a 12 month period. To ascertain whether we hold this information, we would need to manually review hundreds of revocation records to determine whether a driver was re-licensed within the timeframe you have provided. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described, exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to narrow its scope to focus on matters that are of most importance to you.
If you are unable to access the links for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Abidakun
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London