TfL Ref: 2588-1920
 
Thank you for your request received by us on 25 November 2019 asking for copies of Silvertown Tunnel correspondence
 
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. You asked for:
 
all internal TfL email correspondence, and email and other correspondence between TfL and individuals in the Mayor's office, relating to letters and emails to the Mayor and his deputies from the Stop the Silvertown Tunnel Coalition, and.to responses to these letters, from May 1st 2019 to date.
 
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 undertaken an email search for all emails since 1 May 2019 with the phrase ‘Stop the Silvertown Tunnel Coalition’ within our Investment Delivery Team that was involved in this matter and this produced 446 results.

We would need to manually review all of these emails to identify which are specifically relevant to your request. We also anticipate there may potentially be other emails which may fall within the scope of your request but do not fall within the aforementioned search parameters. Consequently, an additional volume of material may need to be scrutinised and collated accordingly for the purposes of your request.

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 narrowing the timeframe of correspondence and/or limiting your request solely for emails to and from City Hall, thereby excluding all internal emails in the process.
 
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