Request ID: FOI-3457-2223 Date published: 06 April 2023
You asked
Dear FOI/TFL
May I request information regarding Taxi driver licensees.
Please can you provide me a breakdown by year when a licensee were first granted their taxi licence, ie how many of current licensees received their first licence in 1990, 91, 92 etc.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-3457-2223/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 23 March 2023 asking for information about Taxi driver licences.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. You asked:
May I request information regarding Taxi driver licensees.
Please can you provide me a breakdown by year when a licensee were first granted their taxi licence, ie how many of current licensees received their first licence in 1990, 91, 92 etc.
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’.
Our system allows us to report on current licences, previous licences are overwritten when a licence is renewed.
Although we do hold information on when a driver was first, and subsequently, licensed, to provide this information we would need to manually check each licensee’s individual record to compile the information. With over 18,300 licensed taxi drivers, this would be a huge task which 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.
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
