Request ID: FOI-2738-2223 Date published: 23 February 2023
You asked
In connection with the TfL proposals to expand the existing ULEZ area out to the outer boundaries of the GLA area, please can you provide documents and/or emails, meeting minutes etc . which give the following information, including any relevant emails between senior TfL Officers including the TfL Commissioner (or the subsequently-appointed Interim Commissioner) and the TfL Chief Financial Officer.
1) ULEZ Expansion Business Case and all major cost/revenue assumptions within it
Please provide:
• The signed-off (ie. approved version) of the TfL ULEZ Expansion Business Case, including the relevant minutes of any senior-level/board meeting (and date of such meeting) at which it was approved.
• A breakdown of the derivation of the costs of ULEZ expansion (both capital and operational), including the proposed new scrappage scheme over the years 2022/23 to 26/27 (or longer if available).
• A breakdown of the extra revenue anticipated from the expansion of the ULEZ over the years 2023/24 to 26/27 (or longer if available).
(Please note that the following income and operating cost information has already been published in the draft 23/24 GLA budget proposals, but an extra level of disaggregated detail is here being requested, relating specifically and solely to the incremental costs and revenue of the proposed ULEZ expansion, over and above the existing costs and revenues of CC, LEZ and ULEZ (in its current operational area).
2) Contracts to vendors/installers for the supply and installation of the additional surveillance infrastructure and to outsourcers for the ongoing additional back-office capacity to be provided
• Please provide summaries of all capital contracts (including the date on which they were (or will be) authorised, and subsequently let, on behalf of TfL) with the contractor(s) that is (are) providing and installing the large number of additional cameras and masts/gantries and communications backhauls to the control centre required for the ULEZ expansion?
• Please state the number of new cameras being provided?
• Please indicate when installation of the cameras and backhaul infrastructure for the ULEZ expansion began (or will begin).
• Please provide details of the current account costs of additional ongoing operational (people and hardware) capacity being sought from the outsourcing company that is already providing ‘back-office’ services to TfL for CC, LEZ and the current ULEZ. (This ongoing extra capacity being required in order to service/process the additional user data and consequential PCNs etc. from the large number of new cameras).
• Please indicate when provision of this additional operational capacity for the August 2023 expansion of ULEZ was (or will be) formally requested from the outsourcing company.
3) Sources of capital for investment into the new scrappage scheme and the cost of the additional camera/mast and backhaul infrastructure
• Please provide documentation that shows which TfL capital budget pot it has been agreed to use to fund the new (£110M) scrappage scheme.
• Please provide documentation that shows which TfL capital budget pot is being used to fund the (?approx. £250M?) cost of the camera/mast/backhaul infrastructure expansion.
4) Derivation of information on the alleged current death rate attributable to private cars and vans NOx and PM2.5 pollution levels
• TfL has stated: ‘In 2019 toxic air contributed to more than 4000 premature deaths in London’. Please provide the (ideally peer-reviewed) detailed scientific/medical research that provides factual and statistical underpinning of this assertion?
• What is the average number of months, or years, by which it is being asserted that a life is being shortened for these 4000 people as a result of private road transport vehicle emissions in outer London only.
• How many people have died in London in recent years with NOx or particulate pollution being stated on the death certificate as being the prime cause of death?
• TfL has stated that ‘Road Transport accounts for 44% of all NOx and 31% of all PM2.5 emissions’. What proportion of these amounts is estimated to actually come from TfL’s own buses and other operators’ coaches and council dustcarts and TfL-licensed Hackney/black cabs that currently mostly use large diesel engines (and are therefore assumed to be exempt from the restrictions of the ULEZ expansion)?
• By what % is the expansion of the ULEZ expected to reduce the concentration of NOx and PM2.5 in the air in the outer London Boroughs compared with the current base case?
• How has the economic benefit of this % reduction in NOx and PM2.5 been modelled/quantified for the purposes of inclusion in the Business Case economic Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) calculation?
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-2738-2223
Thank you for your request received on 26 January 2023 asking for information about the Ultra-low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require.
Given the extent of the information you are looking for, we are applying Regulation 12(4)(b) as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because providing the information you have requested would impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of resources.
A large amount of data that relates to the questions you have asked has already been published in response to other FOI requests we have received:
This includes information on the scrappage scheme, ULEZ cameras, estimated projected revenue, as well as the research the expanded ULEZ is based on.
Other information that has also been published that contains some of the information you have requested includes:
• London-wide ULEZ Integrated Impact Assessment (ULEZ Scheme IIA) • Inner London ULEZ – One Year Report • London Health Burden of Current Air Pollution and Future Health Benefits of Mayoral Air Quality Policies • London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (LAEI) After reviewing the above documents you may wish to consider narrowing the scope of your request so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract any additional information you are seeking. To further help limit the scope of your request, you may want to remove the part of your request that asks for documents and/or emails, meeting minutes etc which contain the information you have asked for.
The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that the release of information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and may help address your particular concerns about this issue. However, the time it would take to provide the information you have requested would divert a disproportionate amount of our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception.
We will consider your request again, if you are able to narrow its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking.
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
