Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, I am requesting the following information for 6 years: • Please provide how many FOI requests have been turned down under Under section 12 of the FOI, and been asked to pay ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 Act. • Starting from Uber, How many applications Form 101a you received for app-based operator’s license and from who (sole traders /ltd companies with trading and companies names? • Please include a list of companies charged for old and new fee structure & How many brought under new fee structure (license to grant fee/Renewal) & How many were already charged for application process under the old structure and then been treated under new structure as well. • Can you also mention the duration of applications took from initial submission to granting licenses as well? • Please provide the dates of forms amended on net and paper and the dates of web addresses blocked for info like www.tfl.gov.uk/PHVoperators & leaflet form PHV/111

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TfL Ref: FOI-2486-1718

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 29 November 2017.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require.

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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.

We have estimated that it would considerably exceed the appropriate limit to provide a response to this request. To fully answer your request we would need to conduct manual searches of all current and past operators over a six year period which would mean looking through well over 2,400 records to then collate the information you require. Furthermore, we do not differentiate between “app-based operators” and any other private hire operators and so we can not easily isolate our searches in this way in order to answer your question specifically related to ‘app based operators’.

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, you may wish to prioritise the information you require and submit a request across a specified, narrower period of time that is less likely to raise concerns about the cost limit.

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

Yours sincerely

Lee Hill

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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