Request ID: FOI-2625-2223 Date published: 13 February 2023
You asked
Dear Sir,
Please advise:
1. How many staff (as measured by full-time equivalents) do you employ to work on communications? Please include all internal and external communications including work on your website, media queries and social media.
2. What was your communication spending for the financial year 2021/22 and what is the budget for the current communications spending in the current financial year?
We answered
TfL Ref: 2624-2224 and 2625-2223
Thank you for your two requests received by Transport for London (TfL) on 18 January 2023 asking for information about our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion spend, budget and training spend, and our Communications staffing, budget and spend.
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. Your requests are:
FOI ref 2624-2223 You asked: 1. How many staff (as measured by full-time equivalents) do you employ to work on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)?
2. What was your spending on Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) for the financial year 2021/22 and what is the budget for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the current financial year?
3. What was your spending on Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) training for the financial year 2021/22 and what is the budget for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training in the current financial year?
4. How many staff working days do you estimate were lost from regular work due to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) training for the financial year 2021/22 and what is your estimate of staff working days that will be lost from regular work due to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training during the current financial year?
FOI ref 2625-2223 You asked: 1. How many staff (as measured by full-time equivalents) do you employ to work on communications? Please include all internal and external communications including work on your website, media queries and social media.
2. What was your communication spending for the financial year 2021/22 and what is the budget for the current communications spending in the current financial year?
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, it is not possible to source it all within the costs limit for responding to requests as set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, a public authority such as TfL is not required to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. Under Regulation 5(2) of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004, we are permitted to aggregate requests where they relate to any extent to the same or similar information and this aggregation applies to any requests that are received within a sixty working day period, including individuals considered to be acting in concert (including pseudonyms). We consider that the aggregate cost of complying with both your requests referred to above would considerably exceed the cost limit. Therefore we are refusing the above requests.
There is no quick or efficient way of sourcing all of the material that falls within the scope of your questions. You are asking a number of questions around the staffing, and associated spend and budgets within the organisation. However the information you have requested is not centrally reportable due to the fluid nature of job roles and departments within the organisation. Work on communications and equality, diversity and inclusion can take many forms and be undertaken by staff across multiple areas of the organisation and so we would need to review a significant amount of information to locate, extract and collate all of the information you have requested.
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to consider narrowing its scope to focus on the information that is of most importance to you. Before doing so you may wish to review the advice and guidance offered by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, published on its website here (I would, in particular, point you to the table of “Dos and Don’t’s” that can be found halfway down the page):
The narrower and more specific the scope of your request the more likely it is we will be able to respond positively within the costs limit. Please be aware also that the FOI Act pertains to recorded information only. There is no requirement to create new information nor to source information from third parties (for example, from the private operators that run bus services in London).
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Sara Thomas FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
