Request ID: FOI-2722-2122 Date published: 02 March 2022
You asked
Can you help me in anyway obtaining a photo of the wrecked 1938 train other than what’s public domain .
Have you any data on 1938 tube carriages and motors and bogies please
can you help me have you any drawings of the cab layout of a 1938 tube driving car please?
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-2600-2122 / FOI-2722-2122
Thank you for your recent requests asking for various pieces of information relating to the class 1938 train stock. Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. We apologise that you do not feel you have been supported in your research to date. As you may be aware, our physical collections are stored off site and access for staff and researchers to all original physical files is via a public search room following an arranged delivery of requested files. We have been unable to open and therefore facilitate access to our physical archives since March 2020 for a number of reasons, including the restrictions in place during the pandemic as well as a physical move from our location in St James Park to our new facility in Stratford.
We will return to the office this month, March 2022, and complete refurbishment with a view to a phased re-opening to users from April 2022. We appreciate this is frustrating for people like yourself who wish to access the archive, but we are doing all we can to expedite this process.
Our records show that you have made at least seven requests to TfL, not including those made to the London Transport Museum, in a continuous period of 37 working days (excluding bank holidays) up to and including the date of your most recent request of 24 February 2022. 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 of £450 provided for in the Freedom of Information (FOI) and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described. We have estimated that, to date, it has cost £125 to provide a response to your earlier requests, equating to an estimated 5 hours spent locating, retrieving and compiling the information you requested. We believe to respond to your remaining outstanding requests would require at least 56 hours to retrieve, assess and compile the information at a further cost of £1400 totalling 61 hours of work at an overall cost of £1525. Please note that this figure is at the lower end of the estimated time it would take to respond to your requests and does not include the time it would take to scan the requested information, so the time taken would likely be much higher. One of your requests, dated 17 February 2022, asks: ‘Have you any data on 1938 tube carriages and motors and bogies please?’ We estimate that this request alone would take over 30 hours to process due to the broad nature of your request. We would have to identify all material that we hold that may be relevant to your queries. Time would then still be needed to scan anything that might be of interest.
We are now applying an aggregate cost limit to the other outstanding requests which we received from you between 17 and 24 February 2022, inclusive under section 12 of the FOI Act. Please note any further requests that we receive within a 60 working day timeframe may also be subject to consideration under section 12 of FOI.
I understand that you have made a request for a copy of the 69 rule book and some photos to the London Transport Museum. They will respond to these requests separately. Please also note that your most recent request of 24 February 2022 does not constitute a request for information that we can help you with.
While we appreciate that you have an interest in this subject, there is a small team available to respond to these requests and the burden placed on them has to be balanced with their substantive roles. To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to prioritise the information you are most interested in and make a single request on a topic to us directly rather than sending several requests to different areas of the business in a short period of time in order to make the best use of the processing time available to you under the FOI Act. 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
