I request all complaints and responses "phone, letter, web email" made regarding the bus route 318 from 1st January 2018 to 20th January 2019 Please can I also be told the total amount of complaints made against the route for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017.

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Our ref:  FOI-2780-1819

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20 January 2019 asking for information about complaints received about bus route 318.

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’.

You have asked for “all complaints and responses "phone, letter, web email" made regarding the bus route 318 from 1st January 2018 to 20th January 2019”. A search of our system has shown we have received 131 complaints regarding bus route 318. In order to answer your request we would need to locate copies of these complaints and our responses to each of these, establish if they are relevant to your request and compile the information. We estimate that it could take up to 15 minutes for each complaint received. This would not include redacting any personal or confidential information. The clarification of your request which you sent on 5 February unfortunately does not reduce the burden on providing the information to you, as we would still need to locate and retrieve each complaint and then ascertain whether each one falls under the topics you have provided.

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 copies of all the complaints received.

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

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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