Request ID: FOI-3352-2223 Date published: 11 April 2023
You asked
Dear TfL
Please tell me how many individual complaints of fraud against private hire drivers were reported to TfL by Uber for calendar year 2022. I am not asking how the complaints were disposed, I am just asking for the number of complaints passed to TfL.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-3346-2223 & FOI-3352-2223
Thank you for your requests received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14 March 2023 asking how many individual complaints of fraud against private hire drivers were reported to TfL by Free Now and Uber.
Your requests have been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. You asked:
Please tell me how many individual complaints of fraud against private hire drivers were reported to TfL by Free Now for calendar year 2022. I am not asking how the complaints were disposed, I am just asking for the number of complaints passed to TfL.
Please tell me how many individual complaints of fraud against private hire drivers were reported to TfL by Uber for calendar year 2022. I am not asking how the complaints were disposed, I am just asking for the number of complaints passed to TfL.
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’.
Private Hire Operators are required to report specific issues to TfL (e.g. when a driver has been removed from a platform or when it has received a serious complaint) by submitting a PH105 form. However, there is no specific category for reporting ‘complaints of fraud against private hire drivers’. Therefore, to answer your request we would need to manually check all the forms received in 2022 to see determine which of these relate to your request.
In 2022 we received thousands of PH105 forms from Free Now and Uber, and manually reviewing all of these would exceed the appropriate limit.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.
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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
