Our Ref:          FOI-4406-1718

Thank you for your request received on 5 February 2018 asking for information about claims for damage done to the TfL Road Network (TLRN).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and TfL’s information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require. Your refined request asked:

My request is about cases where you or those doing repairs are trying to recover damages from a negligent third party.

I ask for the number of claims for all areas for the past 5 years in an Excel spreadsheet for under and over threshold claims

The information needs to identify the area, date, the contractor , the value of the claim, those where a culprit was identified, those where a recovery was made and amount of recovery

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 request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

Please note that we do not record any claims where the cost of repair is less that £10k because the contractors deal with these directly without notifying TfL. We do not receive information on whether the claims are recovered.

The information you have requested that we do hold is not recorded centrally. In order to provide the requested information we would have to identify and collate this information for all damage done to every road on the 580kms of the TfL Road Network (TLRN). This is a vast amount of data for any one year, the request is compounded because you have asked for five years worth of data.

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 Transport for London. 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 TfL.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does 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 feel free to contact me.

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

Yours sincerely

Gemma Jacob
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

[email protected]