FOI request detail

Taxi complaint handling and prevention

Request ID: FOI-2721-1920
Date published: 18 December 2019

You asked

(a) how many complaints have Transport for London received about Black Cabs in the last 5 years (b) how many of those complaints allege the driver many not have been the registered driver (c) what ratio of complaints made to the Public Carriage Office concerning black cabs are round in favor of the passenger (d) what preventative actions do TFL/PCO take to prevent unregistered drivers driving Black cabs.

We answered

 

Our ref: FOI-2721-1920/GH

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 6 December 2019 asking for information about complaints regarding taxis.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, to provide the 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

Question b) of your request refers to complaints about the driver not being the registered driver. We do not have a complaints classification code for this specific complaint, and therefore have no accurate way of extracting the data. Therefore the only way to answer this part of your request would be to manually read each one, and this would easily exceed the cost limit.

To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.

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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Graham Hurt

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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