TfL Ref: FOI-2661-1617
Thank you for your email received on 28 March asking for information about Private Hire compliance and licensing activities.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our Information Access Policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested. You asked:
How many PH licences you revoked due to illegal parking and anti-social behaviour by PH Drivers at Heathrow in the past 3 years?
Transport for London compliance officers are deployed across London and regularly attend Heathrow airport where they work alongside the police and airport authorities. We always act on any evidence of wrong-doing with actions ranging from a warning for a first offence to suspension or revocation of a driver’s licence for repeated offences. Compliance officer deployments are based on intelligence, including geographical information, however, any resulting licensing action is not categorised by the location where an offence has occurred.
Unfortunately, to provide you with the 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 we would need to manually check each revoked private hire drivers licence for the past three years.
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.
How many PH driver's and/or operator's fitness to remain licensed were reviewed by TfL where there is evidence that they are not discharging their public safety responsibilities?
We would always review a driver and/or operator’s fitness to remain licensed where there is evidence that they are in breach of their duties in the interests of public safety. Your query, however, covers a broad range of information and does not refer to a specific time period. We would be happy to reconsider this request, if you are able to narrow its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking.
To ensure transparency around our enforcement and compliance activities we regularly publish information on our website. Please visit the following pages for further information:
www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/safety-and-security/security-on-the-network/cab-enforcement,
www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/compliance-and-enforcement.
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,
Melissa Nichols
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
