TfL Ref: FOI-2911-2425 / FOI-2952-2425 / FOI-3023-2425
Thank you for your requests of 9th, 11th and 19th December 2024, detailed below.
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked the following:
Case reference FOI-2911-2425:
“I seek further clarification on your response below. Please provide the following:
1. A copy of TfL's "consents process" to which you refer below for making Traffic Orders. I have never been provided with this.
2. A copy of TfL's "internal governance process" to which you refer below for making traffic orders. I have never been provided with this. You state "...has been properly approved in accordance with TfL’s internal governance processes."
3. Please explain at what point TfL considers a draft Traffic Order transforms from being in draft form to being legally binding? You state below that "There is no legal requirement for Traffic Orders to be signed and signatures are only applied as part of usual custom and practice." If no signatures are required, then what does TfL consider is required to make draft Traffic Orders become law? If it is not a signature, then what is it? Please provide written documentation evidencing this.
4. Please provide me with the signed and dated written decision to make Traffic Order 0622. You state "The decision to make Order 0622 has been properly approved...".
Case reference FOI-2952-2425:
“Thank you for the audit record for the making of Public Notice 0062 and Traffic Order 0062, both of which constitute laws and criminal offences if broken. They are laws made under delegated powers from Parliament. I seek further disclosure of the following:
2. Please explain why the audit record states "....created the traffic order" for the September dates when it was a public notice being created, not a traffic order?
3. Please explain what "Generated Form12" means. What form is this?
4. Under each of the three "Generate Letter" entries, please detail the recipient organisation of each letter and a description of the content of the letter.
5. Under "Status change" on 9 October 2023, please explain why the status was changed to "In Force" when Traffic Order 0062 did not come into force until 18 October.
6. Please explain why there are at least three different official versions of Public Notice 0062 (attached), with different signature blocks and different last paragraphs. One version reads "The restrictions will not apply to any vehicle..." and the other reads "The restrictions (1) and (2) only above will not apply will not apply to any vehicle...". One version is signed and printed Gary Oliver, another version with signature area redacted and no name printed (nor redacted), and another version with no signature at all (and not redacted) but with the printed name of Gary Oliver.
7. Please provide me with the letter to the chief officer of police required from TfL under the 1992 Road Traffic (Temporary Restrictions) Procedure Regulations, Part III (Temporary Notices Issued by a Traffic Authority), Regulation 10(3)(a), which states "the traffic authority shall give notice of it—(a) to the chief officer of police of any police area in which any road to which the order relates is situated;"
8. The Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984 requires public notice under Part VI (Speed Limits) Section 84 (2) "The power to make an order under subsection (1) is exercisable by the traffic authority,who shall before exercising it in any case give public notice of their intention to do so." Was any public notice of Traffic Order 0062 issued?”.
Case reference FOI-3023-2425:
“I repeat my request: Please provide me an unredacted version of the audit record for the making of these laws by TfL. They are not covered by UK GDPR. The audit record shows the individuals who authored these laws. The individuals should have no expectation that their names would not be disclosed as the authors of these laws that the public must obey under penalty of criminal prosecution. In a democracy, as opposed to a tyranny, lawmakers are not granted anonymity.”
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, your requests are being refused under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act, which can apply where requests have the potential to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress, and which helps to protect public authorities’ resources from unreasonable requests. The decision to apply the exemption has been taken following consideration of the guidance on its use provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on its website here. As you can see, that guidance contains the following statements, all of which apply in relation to your cases:
“Although satisfying section 14(1) is a high hurdle this does not mean that you can only apply it in the most extreme circumstances, or as a last resort. You should consider using it if, after taking account of all the circumstances, you believe the request is disproportionate or unjustified.”;
“The key test is to determine whether the request is likely to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress. A useful starting point is to assess the value or purpose of the request before you look at the impact handling the request would have on you.”
“It is common for a potentially vexatious request to be the latest in a series of requests submitted by an individual. The greater the number of requests received, the more likely it is that the latest request is vexatious. This is because the collective burden of dealing with the previous requests, combined with the burden imposed by the latest request, may mean a tipping point has been reached, rendering the latest request vexatious.”
“You may become overwhelmed, if numerous requests are made in quick succession. This includes where similar requests are submitted before you’ve had the opportunity to respond to previous ones. As the Upper Tribunal in Dransfield said: “A requester who consistently submits multiple FOIA requests or associated correspondence within days of each other, or relentlessly bombards the public authority with e-mail traffic, is more likely to be found to have made a vexatious request”.
“The duration over which previous requests have been made may also be telling. Where requests have been submitted over a long period, possibly years, this may indicate that requests will continue to be made in the future. Therefore, even if the latest request appears entirely reasonable, when viewed in isolation, you may take into account the anticipated burden of those future requests when assessing burden.”
It is the cumulative burden of your requests over a sustained period, and the likelihood that the pattern will continue, that is central to our decision that the exemption rightfully applies to these latest cases. Since 14th May 2024 we have received 18 FOI requests from yourself. This is in addition to 9 further cases we have received from another individual we believe you are acting in concert with, received since 23rd April 2024, some of which were submitted using a pseudonym. This is a total of 27 requests in an 8 month period, or more than one request every two weeks for 34 weeks in a row. It is also the case that your requests are often submitted within days of each other, with new requests submitted before we have had a chance to answer the previous one and that any response leads to a further request and/or an unreasonable persistence in pursuing matters which we consider to be resolved.
Should you have reason to believe a PCN or speeding fine has been issued to you incorrectly, whether that be as a result of what you believe to be an invalid Traffic Order or any other matter, there is already a very well established appeals process under which you have the right to appeal. It is this process, which is set up for precisely this purpose, which would be more beneficial to pursue. We do not consider it a reasonable or proportionate use of our resource to dedicate our limited and specialist resource to divert away from their core functions to address the frequent and overlapping requests, questions and queries you are submitting as part of your personal campaign.
Given all of this, and in light of the passages cited above from the ICO guidance, we see no public interest in expending the necessary resource to answer these latest requests.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
