Routes 24 and School Route 603

Transport for London did not have the information requested.

Dear Transport for London,

I was confirmed by a FOI request on the Hampstead area confirming Routes 24 and School Route 603 was looked at the as part of work in the Highgate area in 2020.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...

In relation to this, I am requesting further information on the exact ideas or proposals that were developed for Routes 24 and 603 in the Highgate area.

Yours faithfully,

Sean Cirillo

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Cirillo,

 

TfL Ref: FOI-2050-2122

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7^th
December 2021 asking for information about bus routes 24 and 603.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 7^th January 2022.

 

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[1]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Cirillo,

 

TfL Ref: FOI-2050-2122

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7^th
December 2021 asking for information about bus routes 24 and 603.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

Specifically you asked:

 

“I was confirmed by a FOI request on the Hampstead area confirming Routes
24 and School Route 603 was looked at the as part of work in the Highgate
area in 2020.

 

[1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...

 

In relation to this, I am requesting further information on the exact
ideas or proposals that were developed for Routes 24 and 603 in the
Highgate area. “

 

No exact ideas or proposals were developed in respect of routes 24 or 603
in the Highgate area. Work is, however, ongoing regarding route 24. Any
proposed changes will be subject to future consultation. We have no
current plans to make changes to route 603 at the moment.

 

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable
to access it for any reason, 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,

 

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

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Dear Transport for London,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Transport for London's handling of my FOI request 'Routes 24 and School Route 603' as this is the second time that I had encountered potential incompetence from the organization on handling my FOI request.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...

The link I had put above mentions work were conducted on Routes 24 and 603 as part of a recent Highgate review in 2020. From this, I am expecting some ideas and proposals to be developed for both routes despite they were put aside due to works on the Inner and Central London bus network. Information was failed to be provided to be on even some of the ideas that were drafted for Routes 603 and 24 from the Highgate review. This request handling also mentioned no ideas were developed for route 603 despite mentioning works were conducted on the route 603 from the Highgate review from my previous request.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

Sean Cirillo

M Clary left an annotation ()

Just a thought. Isn't it possible to look at something and not come up with any proposals? Though if that is the case it would be sensible in response to say that clearly.

FOI, Transport for London

TfL Ref: IRV-058-2122

Thank you for your email which was received by Transport for London (TfL) on 22 December 2021.

You have stated that you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

A review will be conducted by an internal review panel in accordance with TfL’s Internal Review Procedure, which is available via the following URL:
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparenc...

Every effort will be made to provide you with a response by 24 January 2022. However, if the review will not be completed by this date, we will contact you and notify you of the revised response date as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please feel free to contact me.
Yours sincerely

Emma Flint
Principal Information Access Adviser
FOI Case Management Team
Transport for London

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FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Cirillo

I am contacting you regarding your email of 22 December 2021. Unfortunately from your email we are unable to ascertain clearly what it is you wish to be reviewed. In order for the panel to continue with your review can you please clearly outline what it is specifically you are complaining about and which FOI response to your referring to.

Sincerely

Emma Flint
Principal Information Access Adviser
FOI Case Management Team
Transport for London

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Dear Transport for London,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Transport for London's handling of my FOI request 'Routes 24 and School Route 603'. The reason why I am asking this review of this is because I believe there were ideas and proposals developed for Routes 24 and 603 as part of recent works in the Highgate area in 2020. This handling of this FOI request said there were no proposals for the 603 bus route or the 24 in Highgate whilst I was confirmed works on the 24 and 603 were in the recent Highgate bus review.

This link confirms that information from an internal review response confirmed routes 24 and School Route 693 was looked at on the Highgate bus review in 2020.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

Sean Cirillo

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Cirillo

 

I am contacting you with regards to your email of 22 December 2021.
Following your email a review has been carried out by individuals who were
not involved in the handling of your request (the panel). You have
disputed the response which was provided to your request (FOI-2050-2122)
where we advise that “no exact ideas or proposals were developed in
respect of routes 24 or 603 in the Highgate area”.

 

Your original request of 7 December asked the following – “I was confirmed
by a FOI request on the Hampstead area confirming Routes 24 and School
Route 603 was looked at the as part of work in the Highgate area in 2020. 
[1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...

In relation to this, I am requesting further information on the exact
ideas or proposals that were developed for Routes 24 and 603 in the
Highgate area”.

Firstly the panel agree that the response to FOI-2050-2122 was unclear as
to what information may be held which may fall within the scope of your
request, please accept our apologies for this.  However your request for
‘ideas’ or ‘proposals’ is a little ambiguous as to what could be classed
as an ‘idea’ or ‘proposal’. To us a planning proposal within TfL’s bus
network means is a fully worked up business case for a route change that
can be implemented. In the case of routes 24 and 603 several options for
change (i.e ‘ideas’) were examined in the Highgate Review but none were
taken forward for detailed modelling and business case development . These
‘ideas’ were mulled at a very high level with very little detail produced
on potential costing or feasibility and were very informal and continually
evolved due to their practicalities.  Therefore within our definition of a
‘proposal’ there were none fully worked up for routes 24 or 603 as part of
the work we undertook in the Highgate Review. If we have a ‘proposal’ for
a change we would consult or inform the general public in the usual way,
allowing for comments and feedback from stakeholders and the public which
we can consider.

 

The information that you seek regarding ‘ideas’ discussed in relation to
route 24 and 603 is not information that would be stored in a separate and
singular repository that we can easily access and locate what you are
asking for. Any opinions shared between TfL employees would be part of
ongoing email discussions between said employees over time as situations
change and develop. Therefore to try and identify and locate this type of
information we would need to run a company wide email search using a
search tool called eDiscovery. This allows us to 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. eDiscovery will return a volume of ‘hits’ and
each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a
chain of emails containing a keyword search term at least once.

 

Using the information contained within FOI-2050-2122, the panel carried
out a remote email search on the email account of TfL’s Bus Network
Planning Manager for any emails which were sent and/or received throughout
2020 just containing the keywords ‘Route’ AND ‘24’ to provide an example
of the volume of information that may potentially fall within the scope of
your request for ‘ideas’. This email search just on ‘route 24’ alone
produced 4,202 ‘hits’.

 

These results would inevitably contain vast amounts of information that is
irrelevant to your request as well as mass duplication. However to
identify what information may be within the scope of your request, every
‘hit’ result would need to be manually reviewed, which clearly we would
not have the staff time or resource to do and would significantly exceed
to 18 hour time limit set out under FOIA.

 

To provide you with a little more context with regards to your request for
information, section 12 of FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to
deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the
appropriate limit to-

 

(a) either comply with the request in its entirety or;

(b) confirm or deny whether the requested information is held.

 

The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case and where
we claim that section 12 is engaged, we should, where reasonable, provide
advice and assistance to help the requestor to refine the request so that
it can be dealt with under the appropriate limit. The relevant Regulations
which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom
of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulation.

 

Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations states that a public authority can
only take into account the costs it reasonably expects to incur in
carrying out the following permitted activities in complying with the
request:

 

• determining whether the information is held;

• locating the information, or a document containing it;

• retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and

• extracting the information from a document containing it.

 

Additionally in such circumstances as may be prescribed, where two or more
requests for information are made to a public authority within a
consecutive 60 working day period-

 

(a) by one person, or

(b) by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting
in concert or in pursuance of a campaign,

 

the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to
be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them. We do not have
to make a precise calculation of the costs of complying with a request(s);
instead only an estimate is required. However, it must be a reasonable
estimate.

 

We do not have to make a precise calculation of the costs of complying
with a request; instead only an estimate is required. However, it must be
a reasonable estimate.

 

A realistic estimate is one based on the time it would take to obtain the
requested information from the relevant records or files as they existed
at the time of the request, or up to the date for statutory compliance
with the request. We are not obliged to search for, or compile some of the
requested information before refusing a request that we estimate will
exceed the appropriate limit. Instead, we can rely on having cogent
arguments and/or evidence in support of the reasonableness of its
estimate. However, it is likely that we will sometimes carry out some
initial searches before deciding to claim section 12. This is because it
may only become apparent that section 12 is engaged once some work in
attempting to comply with the request has been undertaken. If we do start
to carry out some searches without an initial estimate, we can stop
searching as soon as we realise that it would exceed the appropriate limit
to fully comply with a request and we are not obliged to search up to the
appropriate limit.

 

To confirm, any searches would be conducted remotely by the FOI Case
Management Team. There is no other centralised process that could be
undertaken to collate information that would be relevant to your request
and it is for this reason that we recommend that requesters outline
clearly and concisely exactly the information that they require,
preferably making reference to specific documentation, as wide ranging
correspondence requests do often lead to concerns about the processing
time necessary to fulfil them. Due to the nature of correspondence
requests, it is often inevitable that a significant volume of information
not relevant to the specific subject matter is caught by a search by
virtue of commonly recurring keywords that are used to identify the
material. However, the process of reviewing and extracting the relevant
material caught by a remote email search and then collating it in response
to an FOI request is entirely manual and it is this process that leads to
the cost limit being breached.

 

Therefore given all the considerations above the panel agree that to try
an identify, locate and extract the information you seek would exceed the
appropriate fees limit as set out under s12 of the FOIA and are refusing
your request in its entirety. Finally as s12 of the Freedom of Information
Act is not a qualified exemption it does not require consideration of the
public interest test.

 

We appreciate that the above response may come as a disappointment
therefore when considering this review response and the all explanations
provided to you the panel suggest that if you wish to make a new FOI
request, you either greatly narrow the scope of the information you seek,
provide narrow timeframes and consider what information is of a priority
to you. The framing of your questions naturally casts a wide net and it is
a far better use of the resources available to you under the FOI Act to be
as narrow and specific as you are able to allow a focused search for the
information you are interested in and allow us to assist you.

 

Correspondence requests by their very nature can incorporate large volumes
of information, much of which would be likely to be irrelevant or of very
limited interest or value. We encourage requesters to take into account
the guidance and advice provided by the Information Commissioners Office
(ICO) such as the “dos and don’ts” published on its website in order to
make the best use of the processing time available under the FOI Act. It
can be far more productive to request specific reports, documents or ask
direct questions rather than cast a wide email search as the burden
created by these can often result in consideration of an exemption on the
basis of the time required to complete.

 

The following link to the ICO website provides advice on how to make an
FOI request -
[2]https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/off...

 

I hope the above response has provided a better clarity regarding the
information you seek, however if you are dissatisfied with the internal
review actions to date please do not hesitate to contact me or alternately
you can refer the matter to the independent authority responsible for
enforcing the Freedom of Information Act, at the following address:

 

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

 

A complaint form is also available on the ICO’s website
([3]www.ico.org.uk).

 

Yours sincerely

 

Emma Flint

Principal Information Access Adviser

FOI Case Management Team

Transport for London

[4][TfL request email]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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