Freedom of Information request, Wembley Park land I look forward to a reply from you to my email of 24 January below in due course, but in the meantime, I note a recent press release: Transport for London has agreed a joint venture partnership with Barratt London on a 450-home scheme next to Wembley Park station. The five-building development on Brook Avenue is on a 1.6-acre site, and will deliver 50% affordable housing, offered as shared ownership and social rented homes. TfL and Barratt London have already partnered on a 350-home development in Waltham Forest. xxxxxxxxxxx, regional land and development director at Barratt London, said: “The site at Wembley Park station is an important development site in the context of the wider Wembley regeneration area.” In view of that press release and my earlier email, I wish to now raise a FoI Act 2000 request with TfL. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST Please supply the following information regarding two plots of TfL-owned land, either side of Wembley Park Underground station. These parcels of TfL land may or may not be shown accurately on Page 15 of: https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/16414602/51-central-place.pdf (1) Copies of any current joint venture or similar contracts signed by TfL with intended joint developers of either of the two sites. (For instance, the media is reporting there is a contract signed now with "Barratt London" for the ("1.6-acre") western site; there may be one regarding the eastern site as well.) You are at liberty to redact reasonable financial material in the contract(s), but I assume I will receive everything else, such as technical details, large-scale boundary maps and timescales in the contract(s). (2) All material held by TfL dating back to the 1990s and into the 2000s, regarding statutory protection of TfL land at Wembley Park station for proposed platforms on the (now) Network Rail Chiltern Line Aylesbury Branch for the aborted Crossrail plans of those times. This would have involved a wider corridor than just the Network Rail land, that is, it stretched on to TfL land. (3) The Information Commissioner has stated that questions can be asked in FoI Act requests, as long as new data is not created in answering them. Therefore: "What guidance to staff and the public exists within TfL, offering any form of protection from development of operational railway land? What established procedure exists to consider specific sites and possibly overrule TfL's general policy in that regard? Has it been applied to Wembley Park? Is this TfL guidance compatible with the mayor's aspirations in the New London Plan? (Incidentally, I spoke at the London Plan Examination in Public on this subject for privately-owned operational railway land, and the session was attended by TfL.) Please provide all such material."

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TfL Ref: 3542-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 17 February 2020 asking for information about Wembley Park.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations and TfL’s information access policy. I can confirm we do hold some of the information you require. You asked for the following information:

We are applying Regulation 12(4)(b) to your request as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because locating, extracting and collating all the information you have requested would impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of resources.

Responding to this request would require searching potentially many hundreds of documents and correspondence in different departments across TfL over a long period of time dating back to the 1990’s when TfL did not exist as an organisation.  The search would also involve searching non-electronic and archived documents in order to be certain that all information we hold is located and provided.  In the time period you have asked about colleagues will have left the organisation and any search would also require a review of former colleagues’ archived email accounts.

The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that the release of information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and also help address your particular concerns about this issue. However, the time it would take to provide the information you have requested would divert a disproportionate amount of our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception.

We will consider your request again, if you are able to narrow its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. You may find it more beneficial to ask specific questions based on the recorded information we hold, rather than a very broad request for correspondence which is more likely to raise concerns around the resource required to process the request, as well as incorporate information which would be likely to be of limited value.

Due to the current on going negotiations and the commercial sensitivity around the proposed development, please bear in mind should you choose to submit a further request that a significant volume of material is likely to engage the commercial interests exception under EIR 2004 in any case.

There is information about our property development framework available here: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/business-and-commercial/property-development

There is also details about the specific proposals for Brook Avenue available here: http://www.brookavenuedevelopment.com/

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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