FOI request detail

Bus announcement communications

Request ID: FOI-4428-1718
Date published: 07 March 2018

You asked

Dear TfL, Please provide me with copies of all internal communications relating to the "Please hold on, the bus is about to move" announcement that was introduced early this year. Please also provide me with copies of all internal communications relating to the announcement that replaced it, "Please hold on while the bus is moving".

We answered

Our ref: FOI-4428-1718/GH

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7 February 2018 asking for copies of all internal communications relating to the "Please hold on, the bus is about to move" and "Please hold on while the bus is moving" announcements.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

To answer your current request, we would need to search for any relevant emails or documents which may be held by people working in different departments, including buses, Press Office, Public Affairs and Customer Experience. It would not be easy to use search terms which would identify solely the information you require, and searching for items such as ‘announcements’ would result in identifying a high number of documents which would need to be manually checked to see if they are relevant to your request, taking an excessive amount of time.

To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.

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. If you have specific questions relating to this trial we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Graham Hurt

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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