Can you please send me a copy of the Garden Bridge risk register/risk log? If no such document exists please provide me with an explanation for why it does not exist plus any analysis of risk that was produced and/or held by TfL on this project?

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TfL Refs: FOI-4315-1718, FOI-4316-1718 and FOI-4330-1718

Thank you for your requests received by Transport for London (TfL) on 29 January 2018 detailed below.

Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require.

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

Please note that under Regulation 5(2) of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004, we are permitted to aggregate requests where they relate to any extent to the same or similar information, and we consider that this is the case with your requests. This aggregation applies to any requests that are received within a sixty working day period. However, in any case, we consider that each of your requests would exceed the limit even if taken in isolation.

In order to assist with advising on how you might wish to refine your request, we have summarised the concerns that arise from each of your requests individually below.

FOI-4315-1718

Under FOI, can you please send me a copy of the Garden Bridge risk register/risk log? If no such document exists please provide me with an explanation for why it does not exist plus any analysis of risk that was produced and/or held by TfL on this project?

We do not hold a single risk register document for the Garden Bridge project. A risk register is a ‘live’ document that is regularly updated. TfL met with the Garden Bridge Trust frequently from 2013 until the project came to an end in mid-2016. It is likely that each of the meetings will have had some form of project document associated with it, including some consideration of risk. There is not a single file location with all of those documents stored and so, to locate the information requested would require us to manually review several thousand emails over this time period and collate the relevant information accordingly. Clearly such a process would considerably exceed the cost limit.

FOI-4316-1718

Under FOI, can you please send me copies of all written correspondence relating to the signing of the Garden Bridge construction contract in February 2016 and/or the decision which preceded it to approve a £7m grant from TfL and the DfT to the Garden Bridge Trust.

To narrow this request, I’d like it to cover only January and February 2016 and to include any of the following individuals (I realise that correspondence between Richard de Cani and Rupert Furness at the DfT is already public as is the letter from Paul Morrell to TfL arguing that the conditions for the release of £7m have been met):

• Senior TfL officer Richard de Cani
• TfL commissioner Mike Brown
• Senior TfL officer Andy Brown
• Garden Bridge Trust executive director Bee Emmott
• Garden Bridge Trust chair Mervyn Davies
• Garden Bridge Trust deputy chair Paul Morrell
• London mayor Boris Johnson
• Deputy mayor for Transport Isabel Dedring
• Deputy mayor Edward Lister
• Senior GLA officer Martin Clarke

• Garden Bridge designer Thomas Heatherwick

This request asks for all emails that include any of the individuals listed above across January and February 2016 which relate to the signing of the Garden Bridge construction contract in February 2016 and/or the decision which preceded it to approve a £7m grant from TfL and the DfT to the Garden Bridge Trust.

As there is unlikely to be a single set of keywords that incorporate every email, we have conducted a search of all emails held in our archive that has been sent to or from those individuals named in those months. This search produced in excess of 3,100 ‘hits’. A hit refers to an email located by our search tool that potentially fits within the scope of your request. These emails would each need to be manually reviewed to determine whether they are caught by your request. Many of the hits are likely to be not relevant, or duplicates, (due to emails being repeated within email chains), as well as emails being forwarded internally for discussion during this time period that contain a relevant email within its email chain. Therefore the actual number of emails covered by your request will be a sub-set of these hits.

However, the only way to locate, extract and collate those that are relevant to your request would be through a manual process of reviewing and then compiling a separate document containing the relevant emails. To conduct this task for such a large volume of emails would also exceed the cost limit.

FOI-4330-1718

Under FOI, please send me details of all Garden Bridge business handled by the TfL board including minutes of meetings where available, any correspondence regarding the Garden Bridge project involving TfL board members and details of any Garden Bridge spending considered and/or approved by the board.

TfL Board papers, including minutes, are published on our website at the following links:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/board-papers

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/board-papers/board-papers-past-years

TfL Board members do not use a TfL email address and so we do not hold emails sent to or by them. We could potentially run a pan-TfL search on all emails held that have been sent to/from any of the Board Members since 2013 and relate in any way to the Garden Bridge but, again, we expect the cost limit would be breached due to the excessive number of hits such a search is likely to generate.

Given the above, we are refusing your requests in accordance with section 12 of the FOI Act. However, we suggest that when considering how you may refine your requests, you prioritise your request(s) to ensure that the processing time available is spent on the information that is of most importance to you.

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

Yours sincerely

Lee Hill

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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