FOI request detail

Transport for London’s use of CCTV

Request ID: FOI-2605-1617
Date published: 12 July 2017

You asked

I am writing under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request information about Transport for London’s use of CCTV, specifically I am asking the following: 1. How many CCTV cameras does TFL currently operate? 2. In the past twelve months, how many times has CCTV footage been requested by the police? 3. In the past twelve months, how many times has CCTV footage been handed over to the police? I further request that the data be broken down by mode of transport.

We answered

TfL Ref: FOI-2605-1617

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11 April 2017 asking for information about CCTV cameras.

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 do hold the information you require.

A report on requests made by the police and other law enforcement agencies for the disclosure of personal data is considered annually by our Audit and Assurance Committee and this is published on our website. This includes statistics around requests and you can find the most recent report here which you may find useful: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/aac-20170314-part-1-item15-personal-data-disclosure.pdf

We receive detailed requests from the police and other law enforcement bodies for the disclosure of personal information on customers and our employees. In accordance with the agreed policy, we consider all such requests on a case by case basis and releases personal data where it is lawful to do so and is consistent with our powers. However, to provide the specific 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.

In order to answer your request, we would need to manually review every request and disclosure and extract those that are from the police and in relation to CCTV data. This would involve searching through thousands of records to collate the requested information. We do not currently categorise ‘CCTV data requests from Police’ separately so the most detailed data we have that is relevant to your request can be found in the link above.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to focus your request on a narrowed timeframe and on a specific area of the organisation.

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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