Our Ref:          FOI-3108-1819

Thank you for your request received on 15 February 2019 asking for information about delays to Crossrail due to copper wiring.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and TfL’s information access policy.

Unfortunately, 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 a request 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.

We have estimated that it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

In order to capture the requested correspondence we would have to do a search across all Crossrail email accounts for a ten year period using the keyword of ‘wiring’. Due to the nature of the work to construct the line and stations it is likely that this would result in several thousand emails. Whilst these emails are likely to include duplicates or chains of emails we would need to manually review each of these results in order to locate, collate and extract any that are relevant to your request.

We are not aware of there being any issues with copper wiring, however any such issues would have come either the electrical or earthing and bonding work. However, in order to identify and issues we would have to search all of the Non-Conformance Reports and/or observation documents for these works across the entire length of the project.

We have published a significant volume of information, including correspondence, relating to the Crossrail project which may be of interest to you. You can find this information at the following link: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/crossrail-project-updates.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by Transport for London. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of TfL.

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.

Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please feel free to contact me.

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

[email protected]