Request ID: FOI-3111-2324 Date published: 28 December 2023
You asked
1- How many employees who have been previously dismissed for gross misconduct from London Underground have reapplied and got employment within London Underground since 2000?
2 - how many train operators/ customer service assistant who have been previously dismissed for gross misconduct have returned back to London Underground in any form of employment since 2000?
3 - how many grivences/complaints have been put in against management for all depots (individually) on the Piccadilly line?
4 - how many employees who have been dismissed on gross misconduct charge been reinstated at directors reviews since 2015?
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-3111-2324
Thank you for your request received on 30 November 2023 asking for information about dismissals due to gross misconduct.
Your request has been processed in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold the information you have requested.
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 your request would cost in excess of £450 to provide a response to your current request.
With regard to question 3 of your request, grievances and/or complaints are not always centrally recorded and may be recorded individually against individual personnel files. As your request is for depots there are a number of teams that would have to be contacted, and over 700 staff whose files would need to be reviewed. Additionally, information regarding grievances are recorded against the complainant and not the alleged perpetrator so this would further widen the scope of the files we would need to review. You have also not stated any timeframe for this part of you request so we would potentially have to look at the files of every employee that had once worked in a depot.
Even a conservative estimate of under an hour to go through each case file would still take well over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested. Additional time would be needed to respond to the remainder of you request.
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, bearing in mind the information above. As advised above, this information is not held in a way that the data you have requested can be extracted easily or without the need to review individual case files. As any such requests are likely to exceed the cost limit you may wish to request different information. Please be aware that any timeframe that fits within the cost limit will be likely to only provide you with a very narrow subset of information which is therefore likely to be of limited value.
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 do not hesitate 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