TfL Ref: 2802-2324
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 6 November 2023 asking for information about an online user’s map referred to as Julie’s ULEZ map.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations and our information access policy. You asked for:
all submissions, emails, records of meetings and phone conversations, text messages, social messaging app messages, and other internal or external papers and correspondence in which TFL have discussed or communicated with any body, company, organisation etc, public or private, regarding the website juliemaps.co.uk and / or a Google user map known as Julie’s ULEZ map or similar.
The relevant time period is from April 2023 to the current date.
This enquiry relates to both internal and external discussions, and needs dates and times.
Should TFL claim that any particular item is exempt from disclosure, that needs to be explained, but does not preclude disclosure of other items.
It may be that part or all of a particular item may justify partial redaction, but any redaction needs justification.
We can advise that given the extent of the information you are looking for, Regulation 12(4)(b) applies as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because providing all of the information you have requested would impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of resources. To explain further, we conducted a remote search of emails sent between the requested timeframe using the keywords “Julie map”, “Julie’s map”, “Julie’s ULEZ map” and “Julie ULEZ map”, which produced 7,597 hits. A ‘hit’ refers to an email found within our IT system that potentially fits within the scope of your request. A review of a sample of these hits shows that a significant proportion of these results are news, media and social media summaries circulated across the organisation.
As a result, we have therefore estimated that to manually locate, extract and collate all of the relevant emails caught by such a wide ranging search would be a considerable burden to undertake this work. We are applying this exception to the whole of your request. By their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses which would need to be redacted so that the material released is suitably formatted for public disclosure, this would also be true of any additional information that warrants consideration of any additional exceptions.
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 in a wide-ranging request 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.
If you have specific questions or would like to make a further request for specific documents we will be happy to consider those
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely
Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
