TfL Ref: 4990-1718

Thank you for your email received by us on 22 March 2018 asking for information about the revoking of taxi driver licenses.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. Further to our cost-limit for your aforementioned request, you refined your request as follows: Could you provide question 1 and 2 for the whole five years,

Previous request:
1) Please state the number of taxi driver licenses that TfL has revoked in each of the following financial years.

i) 2013-14
ii) 2014-15
iii) 2015-16
iv) 2016-17
v) 2017-18 to 19.02.18

2) Please break the number of taxi driver licenses revoked down by the reason for which the license was revoked for each of the following financial years.

i) 2013-14
ii) 2014-15
iii) 2015-16
iv) 2016-17
v) 2017-18 to 19.02.18

Current request: and question 3 for the 17-18 financial year to date?

Previous request:
3) For each case of withdrawal recorded in each of the last five financial years, please provide the full text of the justification of the withdrawal of the license by TfL, explaining why exactly the driver in question was having their license removed.

We do not recognise the term ‘full text of the justification’, which can be interpreted in a number of different ways, all of which would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 at this time. This is because providing data in addition to the categories these revocations are listed under would require us to manually review each case file individually and then compile the information accordingly.

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. For example, we estimate that we are likely to be able to manually review approximately 100 files to see what ‘text justification’ is included and collate accordingly. Each record would take approximately ten minutes to identify, review, and establish the text required, in addition to preparing in a format suitable for public disclosure. However, if you choose to refine your request on this basis please bear in mind that this would take you up to 18 hours, consequently no further requests of a similar nature could be submitted within the next sixty working day period, in accordance with Regulation 5(2) of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.

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.

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.

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London