Automatic processing under congestion charge scheme
Request ID: FOI-3805-2324 Date published: 16 February 2024
You asked
1. What individual automated decision-making processes are carried out under the congestion charging scheme, without any human involvement on the decision.
2. Internal processes for issuing and serving penalty charge notices under the congestion charge scheme
3. Which domestic law authorises individual automatic decision-making to the controller for Transport for London.
4. Which Transport for London congestion charge processes fall under Article 22 of the UK GDPR.
5. Which domestic law lays down suitable measures to safeguard the data subject's rights and freedoms and legitimate interests.
6. Please provide copies of checks carried out of your systems carrying out automatic decision-making process for the period 01/01/2022 – 31/12/2022.
7. Any profiling carried out under the Transport for London congestion charging scheme.
8. Data protection impact assessments for any individual automatic decision-making or profiling processes.
9. How does Transport for London obtain individuals explicit consent to process solely automated individual decision-making.
10. Are penalty charge notices issued by human. If yes are records kept of which employee issued the penalty charge notice.
11. Are penalty charge notices produced automatically without human involvement in the decision.
12. Are penalty charge notices issued individually or in bulk.
13. Where is the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express points of view and to contest the decision recorded.
Thank you for your requests received between 26 January and 3 February 2024 asking for information about the Congestion Charge Scheme and virtual road humps.
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our 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 requests. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested. Section 12(4)(a) of the Act provides for the costs of complying with two or more requests made in a 60 working day period which are, to any extent, for the same or similar information to be combined. We are now applying the aggregate cost limit to two of your requests (FOI-3805-2324 and FOI-4009-2324).
Some of the information you have requested in FOI-3805-2324 is already available on our website, including information on how we process and store information:
Specifically, information about automated processing on the Road User Charging privacy notice under the heading, ‘Automated processing and profiling’.
All individuals have the right to submit a representation against the issue of a penalty charge notice, which will involve human/manual intervention. TfL publishes information on how individuals can exercise their information rights, including those related to automated processing, both within the privacy notice itself, as well as our dedicated Information Rights page:
To provide the remainder of the information you have requested would exceed the appropriate limit to identify, locate, and extract the requested information. Part of your requests ask for ‘all recorded information’ of policies, procedures, communications etc. without providing a timeframe for this information. Even if a timeframe were provided the breadth of your request would mean that we would likely have to collate a vast amount of information in order to attempt to capture the information requested. While redaction cannot be included in our calculations of the appropriate limit we are also mindful that any information we were able to identify would have to be reviewed to determine whether it was relevant and whether any exemptions applied. Therefore adding to the burden it would take to provide this information.
With regard to FOI-3881-2324, while this request is on a different subject we consider that on its own it would still exceed the appropriate limit. Once again you have asked for all recorded information on virtual humps. This would likely entail identifying correspondence, reports, meeting minutes etc. held within the entire organisation over an unspecified period of time. The same concerns we have raised above would also apply to this request on its own.
Any attempt to identify, locate, and extract the information you have asked for across all three of your requests would place an unreasonable burden on us. Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering these requests would represent a disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of personnel.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests 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 have specific questions then these may be easier to process rather than a blanket request for any and all documents on a subject.
If you want to refine your request or make a FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. 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.
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do 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 do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
