FOI Ref: 2589-1617

Thank you for your email received by us on 22 March 2017 asking for information about London Overground trains.

We have considered your request in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our Information Access Policy. You asked:

Please provide from 1 January 2016 to the latest date available:

1. the number and % of trains that were scheduled to stop at Canonbury station on the former East London Line (i.e. Highbury and Islington to Clapham / New Cross and not trains that run to or from Stratford) at any time, but for whatever reason did not stop there. This includes trains that were cancelled from start to finish, but also trains that are instructed to run to their scheduled final destination but miss out Canonbury. Please provide counts and % for trains to and from Highbury & Islington Station separately.

2. Please provide the same as 1 but for peak hours only and confirm what you believe peak hours to be.

3. For the number of trains identified under 1 and 2 above, please also provide the top 5 reasons for instructing those trains not to stop at Canonbury station.

Unfortunately, to provide you with the further information you have requested, listed above, 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 limited methods of interrogating the Compass system (that holds the data) to extract specific information you requested. The requested information could only be extracted by a manual review of the data held and to do this work manually would exceed 18 hours—particularly given the timescale requested. Furthermore, the reasons for cancellations are linked to an attribution code and therefore the recorded data have limited specificity.

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 note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised 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