Our Ref:        FOI-2703-2425

Thank you for your request received on 25 November 2024 asking for information about the renaming of the London Overground.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold the information you have requested. You asked:

•           A figure of £115,600 paid to DNCO has been quoted in previous FoI requests to TFL. Please can you give a full break down of these costs

DNCO is a creative agency specialising in place branding and naming. Using their expertise in this area means that we could effectively engage with communities ahead of making any decisions on the line names. The total cost paid to DNCO was £115,600 which includes research which helped inform the shortlisting of the names. 

The cost includes a number of different research methods, including desktop-based, stakeholder and expert interviews, customer intercepts and workshops to get the views of groups who are often underrepresented in public spaces. The range of methods enabled us to listen to many different perspectives. DNCO also carried out interviews with London Overground customers during their journeys on the London Overground network across 13 days in the summer.

In accordance with the FOI Act, we are not obliged to supply a breakdown of these costs as this is subject to a statutory exemption to the right of access to information under section 43(2) – prejudice to commercial interests.

In this instance the section 43(2) exemption has been applied to a breakdown of the fee paid to DNCO as disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice their commercial interests, as well as our own. Disclosure of this information could hinder our ability to negotiate the best value for money for similar services in the future and for DNCO to competitively tender for similar work.

The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. We recognise the need for openness and transparency by public authorities but in this instance the public interest in ensuring that we are able to obtain the best value for public money outweighs the general public interest in increasing transparency of our processes.

•           Can you also provide all documentation relating to the tender system and choice of DNCO

•           Please could you also provide all documentation, including, but not limited to, all costs for the tender process, including all expenses to TFL

Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the FOI (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 cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

We will have received and sent a large number of emails regarding the renaming that may have made reference to the tender process, including but not limited to teams within London Overground, Marketing, and the Press Office. Therefore in order to begin to identify the information you have requested we would need several people for do a search of their emails. The search results will likely include duplicates, as well as emails not caught by the request. However, we would need to manually review all of the emails identified by the search in order to extract and collate the relevant emails. It is possible that as this would be a manual search of those most likely to have corresponded on this subject that some emails will be missed. We would also need to carry out a similar such for any additional documents regarding the tender process such as any invitations to tender or evaluations that may have been done. 

By their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses and so, whilst this process of redaction does not feature as part of our considerations on whether the cost limit might apply the burden created by requests for emails is significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting requests of this nature. In addition, some of the information in the requested correspondence is likely to be commercially sensitive and so would also need to be considered for redaction. The burden created by requested for documents of this nature can be significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting a revised request. 

We therefore strongly recommend you outline, as clearly and concisely as possible, precisely the information and types of document you require. Requests that lack a clear focus are more likely to lead to concerns about the processing time required to meet our obligations under the FOI Act.

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 FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI 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 and a specific timeframe your request covers. If there are specific questions you have then we may be able to provide a response to those more easily than a request for documents.

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 also include all expenses incurred by TFL, including travel, accommodation and expenses during this process. 

I can confirm that there were no expenses claimed during this process. 

•           Please also include any pertaining future costs in both the tender and consultation process 

This will not re-tendered as there is no further requirement.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely 

Gemma Jacob

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

[email protected]