TfL Ref: 4366-1718

Thank you for your email received by us on 1 February 2018 asking for information about personal injury claims.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. You asked for the following:

Personal Injury Claims rejected by TFL/Gallagher Bassett

How many Personal Injury Claims arising from accidents/injuries sustained on footways for which TFL are responsible were rejected by TFL and/or their claims handlers Gallagher Bassett on the grounds the trip hazard was less than 2.5cm/25mm high from 01 January 2016 to 31 December 2017?

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.

Our service provider, Gallagher Bassett, handles approximately 600 claims per annum in relation to Surface Transport. Each claim would need to be manually reviewed to ascertain whether the incident was a highways matter and if so, whether the incident occurred on the road or the footway. Once that was ascertained, the reason for a claim being repudiated, and the date of the repudiation would also need to be examined in order to be complaint with the timescale and information requested.

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.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request 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 want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information 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, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

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.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London