Complainants for bus routes 52 and 452

[Name Removed] made this Freedom of Information request to Transport for London This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was successful.

[Name Removed]

Dear Transport for London,

Could you please provide all correspondence relating to complaints about bus routes number 52 and 452 by phone, email and personal caller between January 2010- most present date.

Please include correspondence removing any personal information including any response sent to the complainant, please also include action taken such as compensation awarded.

Yours faithfully,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0202-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail received on 7 May 2013 asking for information
about complaints made about bus routes 52 and 452.

 

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

 

A response will be provided to you by 5 June 2013.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0202-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail received on 7 May 2013 asking for information
about complaints made about bus routes 52 and 452.

 

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 TfL does hold the information you require.

 

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 £1050.00 to provide a response to
your current request. This is because it would take 42 working hours to
retrieve and compile the information you have requested. For the time
period you have specified we have identified 804 ‘complaints’ logged on
our system in relation to routes 52 and 452.  To extract and compile the
information you require would involve a member of staff having to review
each individual complaint to assess whether it is relevant to your request
and then extracting and compiling the information into a disclosable
format.

 

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.

 

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

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

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Dear Gemma Jacob,

Could you please inform me if just requesting the information for route 52 would reduce the cost of the freedom of information request limit of £450? If so please provide that information.

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0202-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail regarding your recent Freedom of Information
(FOI) request.

 

To provide you with the data just for route 52 would still go over the
cost limit. If you would like the data for route 52 you may consider
narrowing the time period your request covers. Alternatively, we are able
to provide the information for route 452 for the period requested.

 

If you would like to further revise your request to bring it within the
limit please let me know.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

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Dear Gemma Jacob ,

Please provide the complaints data for route 52 between January 2011- Current date.

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0344-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail received on 31 May 2013 asking for information
about complaints made about bus route 52 from 2011 to the date of your
request.

 

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

 

A response will be provided to you by 28 June 2013.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0344-1314

 

Further to my e-mil of 31 May 2013 I have been in contact with the team
providing the information and they have advised that the time taken to
provide the data for the current request would still go over the Cost
Limit.

 

There were 129 complaints made in 2011, 159 complaints in 2012, and 65 up
to 30 May 2013. If you could please further narrow your request to either
a specific year or a 12 month period. Once a revised request has been
received I can then determine whether we will be able to provide the
information.

 

I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any queries in the
meantime please feel free to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

From: FOI
Sent: 31 May 2013 10:55
To: '[FOI #160391 email]'
Subject: FOI Request - Complaints for Routes 52

 

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0344-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail received on 31 May 2013 asking for information
about complaints made about bus route 52 from 2011 to the date of your
request.

 

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

 

A response will be provided to you by 28 June 2013.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[2][TfL request email]

 

 

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Dear Gemma Jacob ,

Please provide the complaints data for route 52 between January
2012- Current date.

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Taylor

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0344-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail further narrowing your request.

 

A response will be provided to you by 3 July 2013.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

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Dear FOI,

Please remember that a response is due no later then 3 July 2013.

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

10 Attachments

Dear Taylor Jones

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0344-1314

 

Thank you for your e-mail received on 31 May 2013 asking for information
about complaints made about bus route 52 from 2012 to the date of your
request.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can
confirm we do hold the information you require.

 

Please find the requested information attached.

 

Please note that in accordance with TfL’s obligations under the Data
Protection Act 1998 (DPA) any personal data has been removed, as required
by section 40(2) of the FOI Act. This is because disclosure of this
personal data would be a breach of the DPA, specifically the first
principle of the DPA which requires all processing of personal data to be
fair and lawful. It would not be fair to disclose this personal
information when the individuals have no expectation it would be disclosed
and TfL has not satisfied one of the conditions of Schedule 2 of the Data
Protection Act which would make the processing ‘fair’.

 

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

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

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Dear FOI,

Thank you for providing me the information I requested, I understand the need for personal information to be removed for the disclosure, however in 'FOI 0344 1314.pdf' the complaint on the bottom of page 40 0002607077 appears to be not personal information but a "rude word". Please could you confirm that the above is not personal information and what the policy is for removing not personal information from disclosures?

Should the above mentioned not be personal information could you please provide a complete disclosure with only the necessary personal information to be removed?

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Taylor Jones,

 

Please find below the extract in full to which you are referring to. 

 

When considering disclosure of information, we define ‘personal
information’ as information that is descriptive and could potentially
identify a living individual either on its own or when combined with other
information (such as name, postal address, email address, telephone
number, personal identification numbers or detailed descriptive
information of a individuals appearance).  Any other information that has
been removed from the complaints provided do fall within the above
criteria and are exempt under s40 (2) of the Data Protection Act.

 

In this instance I can advise that the decision to remove this specific
word contained within the complaint was taken by a member of the team as
he felt it could be deemed offensive.  However, this did not constitute
personal data as the individual concerned could not be identified and
therefore did not fall within the applied section 40(2) exemption.

 

Due to this we have referred your query to our Senior Enforcements and
Complaints Adviser to process as an internal review into the handling of
your request.  A

response will be sent to you within 20 working days concerning this
outcome.

 

We do not have a policy for removing non personal information from
disclosures; however disclosures made under the Freedom of Information act
are subject to the consideration of any appropriate exemptions that may
apply to the information being requested.

 

Please accept our apologies for any confusion this has caused.

 

Yours Sincerely

 

Emma Flint

Information Access Adviser

FOI Case Management Team

Transport for London.

 

0002607077

 

IN

 

Notes

03.04.2012          19:42:41           

 

Notes

03.04.2012          19:42:17           

 

Customer called to report the attitude of the bus driver route 52.

 

Customer said a group of teenage girls got on the bus and aggravated the
bus driver and when they got off the bus, the driver did a bl*w J*b
gesture to the girls.

 

Customer said this attitude is not right as the girls were very young and
the driver should be in his 40's to 50's.

 

 

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Dear FOI,

The internal review that you advised would be completed is overdue, please could you update me on it's status?

Yours sincerely,

[Name Removed]

Sloane Peter, Transport for London

1 Attachment

14 July 2013

 

Our reference: IRV-032-1314

 

Dear Taylor Jones

 

I am contacting you further to your concerns about the response to your
request for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000,
and the email of 4 July from Emma Flint of the Information Access team
regarding carrying out an internal review of your request. I am sorry that
I have not been able to respond to you sooner.

 

I can confirm that, as Ms Flint stated, the words in page 40 were redacted
by a member of the Information Access team as he had concerns about the
language involved. However, this information would not have fallen under
any of the exemptions contained in the FOI Act. I can also confirm that
the asterisked version contained in the attached document is how it was
recorded on the system in this case and does not represent any kind of
editing. It would not be TfL policy to withhold ‘blow jobs’ or any other
potentially offensive language in response to an FOI request, and nor
would there be any legal basis for us to do purely because of the words
involved. I can confirm that this kind of detail has been included in
response to other, similar FOI requests for complaints information.
However, this does highlight that it may be necessary to advise requesters
where a response contains such language and shall advise the Information
Access team accordingly.

 

I am sorry about any inconvenience or confusion caused as a result, as I
appreciate that this could give rise to concerns about whether the
redactions had been applied correctly throughout the rest of the
information released to you.

 

I have therefore reviewed all the pages of complaints that were released
to you with a view to establishing whether  any other previously redacted
information should have been released. Aside from the page that you
raised, there was only one other minor redaction that should not have been
applied and I attach copies of the pages containing these complaints with
the correct redactions in place. For your information, these were pages
40-41 and 64-65 of the original document.

 

If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of this internal review 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
([1]www.ico.gov.uk).

 

Yours sincerely

 

Peter Sloane | Senior Information Governance Adviser (Enforcement and
Complaints)

Information Governance | General Counsel | Transport for London

Windsor House, 42-50 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0TL

E: [2][email address]

 

Personal information plays a critical role in keeping London moving. If
you work for TfL or one of its operating subsidiaries, visit
[3]source.tfl/privacy to find out more about your role in protecting its
security, integrity and availability; and supporting compliance with the
Data Protection Act.

 

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References

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1. http://www.ico.gov.uk/
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://source.tfl/privacy