Request ID: FOI-4551-2324 Date published: 12 April 2024
You asked
Please send copies of all communications between the Deputy Mayor and his policy officers and Transport for London on the subject of the Silvertown Tunnel, or tolling the Blackwall Tunnel, between January 2022 and February 2024. Please also send minutes of any meetings which the Deputy Mayor or his policy officers attended which refer to the Silvertown Tunnel, or the Blackwall Tunnel.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-4551-2324
Thank you for your request received on 14 March 2024 asking for information tolling of the Silvertown and Blackwall Tunnels.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require. When requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case Management team can conduct company-wide email searches using keywords, dates and email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once. We have carried out several searches for all emails held by TfL which have also been sent to/from any GLA mailbox which contains various combination of the words ‘Silvertown’, ‘Blackwall’, ‘tunnel’, and ‘toll’. This has resulted in over 5,000 hits. A number of these will be duplicates. However, In order to process your request in full, we would need to manually review the full content caught by this request in order to determine whether any information contained within them engaged one or more exceptions from disclosure under the EIRs and, therefore, needed to be redacted. We would also need to spend additional time identifying and locating any meeting minutes captured by your request. Given the time it would take to do this and the diversion of limited and specialist resources it would require, we are applying Regulation 12(4)(b) as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’. There are limits on the time that TfL are required to spend determining whether TfL holds the information you are requesting and the time spent locating, retrieving and extracting it. Please note, as emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses that would need to be redacted. This would also be true of any additional information that warrants consideration of any additional exceptions. Additionally, by their nature, wide ranging and non-specific request that ask for correspondence will very likely encompass information which is only of limited value. If you wish to resubmit a request then you should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, for example you may want to provide keywords or a specific subject that we can search against or narrow the timeframe covered. 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. The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that the release of information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and may help address your particular concerns about this issue. However, the time it would take to provide the information you have requested in a wide ranging, and unfocussed request would divert a disproportionate amount of our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception. We will consider your request again, if you are able to narrow its scope so that we can more easily process the full extent of the information you are seeking.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
