TfL Ref: 2967-2122
Thank you for your clarification received by us on 9 April 2022 asking for information about TfL funded qualifications and body worn cameras.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. You asked: For the years 2016 to current date.
1. How many operational staff and other staff have TFL funded to do GCSE Maths and English? What are the requirements for staff to access this funding? Please list the number of staff for each year from 2016 to current date.
2. How much is the cost to TFL for each operational or other staff that they fund to do GCSE Maths and English? Please list the financial cost per year from 2016 to current date. (For question 1 and 2 I require the figures for operational staff across the business. However I would also like a breakdown of the figures for each operational area for example LU operational figures, CPOS operational figures etc).
3. What are the requirements for staff seeking funding from TFL to do association of project management qualification? How many staff have TFL funded to do this qualification from 2016 to date? Please list the number for each year.
3.1 Does TfL fund staff to pursue qualifications not relating to their specific job role, however the qualification is relating to TFL as a whole?
4. Please confirm when you started issuing staff with body worn cameras. (For question 3 and 4 I require the figures across the organisation).
5. Please explain the reasons for issuing staff with body worn cameras. Please list the number of body worn cameras issued to staff and the total cost of all body worn cameras. (For question 5 the time period is 2017).
6. Since issuing body worn cameras to staff has incidents of assaults on staff been reduced? If so please provide the figures for this. (In relation to question 6 I would like to know when you started issuing body worn cameras to operational staff. Since issuing body worn cameras to staff has assaults, threats etc been reduced?).
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’.
For example, we estimate it would significantly exceed the cost limit to identify locate and extract the information we hold to answer in particular questions 1, 2 and 3 of your request. This is because the information you have asked for around the numbers of staff across the whole of TfL who have been funded by TfL to take GCSE English / Maths / a project management qualification will be held in numerous different documents, folders and locations and would need to be identified, located and compiled in order for us to provide the data you have requested. You have also asked (questions 1 and 2) for this to be broken down across all operational areas which would be a significant and time consuming task to complete particularly as you have also asked for this information over a six year period and also for a breakdown of numbers by financial year since 2016. With specific regard to the costs to TfL it would be extremely time consuming to provide a figure for the cost questions you have asked due to the difficulties in trying to directly attribute the various costs to an individual staff member and also to calculate a per person cost for the time provided by the respective subject tutors. The English and Maths tutor’s time is also divided between the GCSE and functional skills classes, therefore there is not any meaningful way to calculate how much of their salary / staff cost could be attribute to each class attendee / exam taker as an individual cost.
We can however provide some information about how the qualifications application process works generally– please see our answers as below:
For GCSE Maths and English, the requirement is that learners first take an assessment which is marked by tutors who then advise what level learners should start at (from functional skills up to GCSE level). Employees can register their interest on the relevant internal SharePoint site.
With regards to project management, there is not currently one set of requirements – we don’t currently centrally fund APM qualifications / exams. All staff have access to the online learning for the APM Project Fundamentals qualification (PFQ) and APM Project Management qualification (PMQ). If an individual staff member want to sit the exam to gain the qualification, they can either self-fund, or ask their line manager if they will fund this from their local cost centre. Normally this would only be done where an individual is working in a project management role.
In general terms, TfL no longer centrally funds sponsorships. Those that are funded are directly linked to Schemes eg. Graduate / apprentice – or are locally funded from cost centres. Where this funding is given it would always be to support someone doing their specific role.
We can also answer your questions about our body worm cameras – please see our answers below.
4 & 5. As part of The Work-Related Violence and Aggression (WVA) strategy, TfL began a rollout of Body Worn Cameras (BWC) to all frontline staff in August 2020. The equipment was rolled out to deter work related violence and aggression (WVA) against our staff and to capture evidence which would lead to improved convictions. Our Revenue Control Inspectors were offered the use of BWC as part of their duties some years before August 2020, but their use was voluntary.
Currently there are 4,559 cameras in use by TfL Operational staff. We expect the number to raise up to 4,644 by June 2022 as part of the second phase of BWC roll out. £4.6m has been spent on BWVC until 24 July 2021. Additional work is in progress to deliver 85 more cameras by June 2022. Accurate cost information for the additional cameras would be available after June 2022.
6. The introduction of BWC is part of a range of measures introduced as part of the WVA strategy, and it is not possible to determine the impact BWCs have had independently on assaults on operational staff. BWC cameras were issued during the pandemic and ridership has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. As part of the WVA strategy, we are also encouraging the reporting of WVA.
Body worn cameras have been shown to reduce the number of incidents of violence and aggression towards staff, as evidenced in a British Transport Police trial with Cambridge University, which saw a 47 per cent reduction in staff assaults.
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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
