FOI Request handling, Data for Jan 2009 - Jan 2010 inclusive

The request was partially successful.

Dear Transport for London,

(1) Please provide the number of FOI Requests received each month by the council for calendar year 2009 and January 2010, and the overall total.

(2) Please confirm whether it is council policy to acknowledge all FOI Requests, and how quickly.

If it is, provide the % which met that target in each month and overall.

If not, explain how the council considers this complies with ICO guidance and the council's duties under the Act, in particular §16 to be helpful.

(3) For each month and the whole period, include how many received the council's response
(a) within 15wd,
(b) in 16-20 wd,
(c) after 20wd,
and (d) any still awaiting response.

(4) Include also how many were met
(a) in full,
(b) partly,
(c) rejected, with a note of the numbers for each reason for rejection - not held, too costly, fees notices etc.

(5) Include how many were referred to Internal Review, how long these took as per (3) above, and the outcome

(6) Lastly for each month and total, include the number of requests that had ICO involvement, distinguishing between numbers where the ICO asked the council to respond due to delay by the council, or where the ICO made a ruling after the council process was exhausted.

Itemise each of these presumably very few cases individually with full dates and outcome.

Please provide this electronically, preferably in an XLS spreadsheet.

Yours faithfully,

James Muldoon

Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

Re: TfL103293

Dear James

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16
February.

Unfortunately, from the description provided, we cannot identify the
information you requested.

I note throughout your request you request information from the
‘council’. Could you therefore please confirm if this request is
directed to TfL or if you intended to submit it to the Greater London
Authority (GLA).

Please note that the 20 working day deadline for responding to requests
under the Freedom of Information Act will not begin until we receive some
additional information to help clarify your request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your
request, please do not hesitate to contact me

Gareth Long
Customer Relations Officer

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Dear Enquire (TfL),

By council, I mean here the transport authority Transport for London, ie TfL.

Yours sincerely,

James Muldoon

Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

Dear James

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 18 February.

You have asked for information and statistics about TfL's handling of FOI requests.

We will deal with your request as soon as possible and in any case provide you with a response by 18 March.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Gareth Long
Customer Relations Officer

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Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

1 Attachment

Re: TfL103350

Dear Mr Muldoon

Thank you for your email of 15 February 2010, in which you submitted a
request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested. For ease of
reference, I have addressed each aspect of your request below.

(1) Please provide the number of FOI requests received each month by the
council for calendar year 2009 and January 2010, and the overall total.

TfL reports on a period basis. Each period is 4 weeks so there are 13
periods in the financial year. Please find attached a spreadsheet covering
January 2009 to February 2010.

(2) (a) Please confirm whether it is council policy to acknowledge all FOI
Requests, and how quickly.

TfL has a standard acknowledgement template (see attached) but there is no
formal policy for acknowledging all FOI requests. However, the Customer
Services Teams, who log and co-ordinate FOI requests, do have local
procedures. TfL Customer Relations aims to log all requests within 24
hours of receipt and send an acknowledgement at the time of logging.
Surface Customer Services aims to acknowledge all FOI requests on receipt.
LU Customer Services sends an automated acknowledgement for correspondence
received electronically.

(b)If it is, provide the % which met that target in each month and
overall?

We are unable to provide the percentage which met that target in each
month and overall. This is explained in more detail in relation to your
points 3 and 4.

(3) For each month and the whole period, include how many received the
council's response

(a) within 15wd,

(b) in 16-20 wd,

(c) after 20wd, and

(d) any still awaiting response.

(4) Include also how many were met

(a) in full,

(b) partly,

(c) rejected, with a note of the numbers for each reason for rejection -
not held, too costly, fees notices etc.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide information relating to points
2(b), 3(a-d), 4(a-c) and 5(a-d) of your request as to provide this
information 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 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 take 108 hours at a cost of £2700 to
provide a response to these aspects of your request. This is because we
are unable to run a report to retrieve the information you have requested.
We would need to refer to each request and manual note down how many
requests received a response within the period you have identified, how
many were met in full, partially or were rejected (noting the reasons for
rejection) and which of these requests were subject to an internal review
(noting the time taken to respond). We have performed this exercise for a
number of requests and it took approximately five minutes per case to
retrieve this information. As TfL received over 1300 requests in the
period you have specified, we have calculated that it would take 108 hours
to provide the information you have requested in points 2(b), 3(a-d), 4
(a-c) and 5(a-d).

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, you may wish to focus your request by being more specific about
the particular information you wish to obtain and including relevant
dates/timeframes

(5) Include how many were referred to Internal Review, how long these took
as per (3) above, and the outcome

(a) within 15wd,

(b) in 16-20 wd,

(c) after 20wd,and

(d) any still awaiting response.

During the period January 2009 to February 2010 TfL dealt with 106
internal reviews for Freedom of Information and Environmental Information
Regulations requests. We are unable to provide details of the time taken
to respond and the outcome of each review for the reason outlined above.

(6) Lastly for each month and total, include the number of requests that
had ICO involvement, distinguishing between numbers where the ICO asked
the council to respond due to delay by the council, or where the ICO made
a ruling after the council process was exhausted.

Itemise each of these presumably very few cases individually with full
dates and outcome

Please find this information attached.

I hope this information is of assistance. If you are not satisfied with
this response, please read the attached help-sheet entitled ‘Your Right
to Appeal’

Gareth Long

Customer Relations Officer

Your right to appeal

If you are dissatisfied with the way TfL has handled your information
request, you can ask us to conduct an internal review of our decision. The
internal review will be conducted by someone who was not involved in the
processing of your original request, in accordance with the complaints
procedure published on our website at [1]www.tfl.gov.uk/foi

Requests for internal review should be addressed to: 

Head of Information Access and Compliance

Floor 5, Windsor House

42-50 Victoria Street

London

SW1H 0TL

E-mail: [2][email address]

Complaints to the Information Commissioner

If, following the internal review, you remain dissatisfied with the way
TfL has handled your request, then you can take your complaint to:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

A complaint form is available on the Information Commissioner’s Office
website at: [3]www.ico.gov.uk

Copyright  

Any copyright in the material provided with this response is owned by TfL
or one of its subsidiary companies unless otherwise stated. The disclosure
of information does not give the person or organisation who receives it an
automatic right to re-use it in a way that would otherwise infringe
copyright (for example, by making copies, publishing it, or issuing copies
to the public). Brief extracts of the material may be reproduced under the
fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
(sections 29 and 30) for the purposes of research for non-commercial
purposes, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. In respect
of use for criticism, review and news reporting, any reproduction must be
accompanied by an acknowledgement that TfL or one of its subsidiary
companies is the copyright owner.

Re-use

If you would like to re-use the information supplied with this response
please contact TfL using the details provided in the attached letter.
Requests for re-use will be considered in accordance with the Re-use of
Public Sector Information Regulations 2005.

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Dear Enquire (TfL),

Thank you for your partial reply.

I cannot see the spreadsheet to which you refer.
Could you kindly resend it?

I can then consider how to rephrase my request to obtain more of the information required without taking so much TfL time as you state.

Yours sincerely,

James Muldoon

Dear Enquire (TfL),

I have made a very simple request, which should be met by return, yet nothing has come all week.

Please address this matter directly.

Yours sincerely,

James Muldoon

Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

3 Attachments

Dear Mr Muldoon

Thank you for your email.

Please accept my apologise for not responding to you sooner.

I enclose the requested attachments as requested. If you are unable to access these for any reason then please contact me.

Yours sincerely

Gareth Long
Customer Relations Officer

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Dear Enquire (TfL),

(1) Thank you for your reply, which does provide some limited useful information.
However the first item omits all relevant detail.

(2) I am conducting research into the ways that councils in London handle FOI Requests.

I made the same request as I made to you to each of the 33 London boroughs, and to the GLA.

I need to import the data into a spreadsheet.

Unfortunately the second 2 PDF files you have provided do not allow me to do this.

Could you kindly supply me this data as an XLS spreadsheet - as I did in fact originally request?

(3) As to Q2-Q5, it appears that TfL is not logging its FOI Requests in the way many would expect. I am surprised that you apparently do not log this key data.

Under ICO and MoJ guidance, councils are required to log their FOI requests in such a way that they can report on them.

I would draw your attention to this webpage:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foi-g...

In particular to this document there:
* Summary guidance on publishing freedom of information data

It surely must be that TfL will review its data on FOI Requests in the light of this guidance.

(4) As to handling the remainder of my FOI Request.

I note that you say "we are unable to provide information relating to points 2(b), 3(a-d), 4(a-c) and 5(a-d) of your request as to provide this information would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Act)."

However, I note that under the FOI Act you do have discretion to provide information even when its cost would exceed the limit.

In this case, while many councils have had no problem providing the information, a couple have done so while exceeding the limit.

For example, LB Sutton wrote "I would like to mention that the information contained in this response, has in fact, exceeded the normal 18 hours to compile, but as the Council is always keen to improve its reporting and performance, we felt it a good use of our additional time to compile this information.".

In the case of TfL, it seems you do not have any sensible system for recording and reporting on FOI Requests.

I say TfL should maintain a spreadsheet for the organisation into which are entered basic details of each FOI Request.
This should then be updated with the information I have asked for.
Clearly the three separate sections could have their own section of the Master File.

This is what many London councils clearly do.

Perhaps you could advise whether and when you will implement this obviously sensible and desirable system, which cannot impose any major burden on TfL - you say it would take about 5 mins per case (which matches my estimate), and this surely must be a very small part of the average time to process a FOI request?

(5) I can understand that "London Underground" have a separate FOI division.
However I do not understand the distinction between "TfL Corporate" and "Surface Transport". Please explain.
Does "Surface Transport" include all FOI Requests which relate to buses, trams and also the road network?

(6) Bearing in mind your suggestion to narrow the range of data required, please provide a spreadsheet which includes the data I asked for in respect of Surface Transport for Periods 8 to 11, a total of 163 items.
Please ensure the XLS spreadsheet also includes a listing of each of these 163 items, the date it was received, the date the reply was produced, and the text of the FOI Request.

(7) I trust that you will be able to provide satisfactory responses to these points, and in particular in terms of the future under the end of (4) above.
In that event I will not need to pursue this case with the ICO for them to issue guidance or instructions how to handle the recording of FOI Requests to TfL.

Yours sincerely,

James Muldoon

Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

Dear James

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 23
March.

You have asked for further clarification and information relating to the
handling of FOI requests received at TfL.

We will deal with your request as soon as possible and in any case provide
you with a response by 22 April.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your
request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Gareth Long

Customer Relations Officer

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Enquire (TfL), Transport for London

2 Attachments

Re: TfL104470

Dear Mr Muldoon

Thank you for your email of 22 March 2010, in which you raised a number of
points regarding TfL’s response to your Freedom of Information request.

Please find TfL’s response to your numbered points set out below. For
clarity, I have responded to your points as you have raised them:

1. The first item omits all relevant detail.

We are unsure what information has been omitted. Can you please clarify?

2. Could you kindly supply me this data as an XLS spreadsheet - as I
did in fact originally request?

Please find attached the data as an XLS spreadsheet.

3. As to Q2-Q5, it appears that TfL is not logging its FOI

Requests in the way many would expect. I am surprised that you apparently
do not log this key data.

Under ICO and MoJ guidance, councils are required to log their FOI
requests in such a way that they can report on them. I would draw your
attention to this webpage:
[1]http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foi-g...

In particular to this document there:

* Summary guidance on publishing freedom of information data

It surely must be that TfL will review its data on FOI Requests in the
light of this guidance.

The documents to which you refer concern reporting of FOI requests. Since
February 2010 TfL has published monthly statistical information relating
to Freedom of Information requests
([2]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/foi/14127.aspx). TfL has no plans to publish
further details of FOI requests received.

I should stress that all the data you requested is recorded by TfL and it
is possible to retrieve it. However, as explained in our response, due to
the way in which it is recorded on the different correspondence systems,
it would exceed the appropriate limit to retrieve all of this information.

4. In the case of TfL, it seems you do not have any sensible system for
recording and reporting on FOI Requests.

I say TfL should maintain a spreadsheet for the organisation into which
are entered basic details of each FOI Request. This should then be updated
with the information I have asked for.

Clearly the three separate sections could have their own section of the
Master File. This is what many London councils clearly do.

Perhaps you could advise whether and when you will implement this
obviously sensible and desirable system, which cannot impose any major
burden on TfL - you say it would take about 5 mins per case (which matches
my estimate), and this surely must be a very small part of the average
time to process a FOI request?

TfL’s correspondence system contains sufficient information for TfL to
log and respond to FOI requests and to report monthly statistical
information on the number of requests received by TfL. TfL has no plans to
initiate a process by which similar information is recorded on a separate
spreadsheet.

5. I can understand that "London Underground" have a separate FOI
division. However I do not understand the distinction between "TfL
Corporate" and "Surface Transport". Please explain. Does "Surface
Transport" include all FOI Requests which relate to buses, trams and also
the road network?

London Underground Customer Services deals with requests relating to
London Underground. Surface Transport deals with requests relating to
Buses, Congestion Charging and Traffic Enforcement, Directorate of Traffic
Operations, London River, Victoria Coach Station and the Public Carriage
Office. TfL Customer Relations deals with requests covering TfL Corporate
departments including General Counsel, Finance and London Rail.

6. Bearing in mind your suggestion to narrow the range of data
required, please provide a spreadsheet which includes the data I asked for
in respect of Surface Transport for Periods 8 to 11, a total of 163 items.
Please ensure the XLS spreadsheet also includes a listing of each of these
163 items, the date it was received, the date the reply was produced, and
the text of the FOI Request.

We have run a report from Surface Transport’s correspondence system for
the periods 8-11. This is attached as an excel spreadsheet. If you require
a more detailed breakdown of any of the information contained therein
please let me know.

I trust you find this helpful however, if this is not the information you
are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

Please see the information sheet below 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

Gareth Long

Customer Relations Officer

Your right to appeal

If you are dissatisfied with the way TfL has handled your information
request, you can ask us to conduct an internal review of our decision. The
internal review will be conducted by someone who was not involved in the
processing of your original request, in accordance with the complaints
procedure published on our website at [3]www.tfl.gov.uk/foi

Requests for internal review should be addressed to: 

Head of Information Access and Compliance

Floor 5, Windsor House

42-50 Victoria Street

London

SW1H 0TL

E-mail: [4][email address]

Complaints to the Information Commissioner

If, following the internal review, you remain dissatisfied with the way
TfL has handled your request, then you can take your complaint to:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

A complaint form is available on the Information Commissioner’s Office
website at: [5]www.ico.gov.uk

Copyright  

Any copyright in the material provided with this response is owned by TfL
or one of its subsidiary companies unless otherwise stated. The disclosure
of information does not give the person or organisation who receives it an
automatic right to re-use it in a way that would otherwise infringe
copyright (for example, by making copies, publishing it, or issuing copies
to the public). Brief extracts of the material may be reproduced under the
fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
(sections 29 and 30) for the purposes of research for non-commercial
purposes, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. In respect
of use for criticism, review and news reporting, any reproduction must be
accompanied by an acknowledgement that TfL or one of its subsidiary
companies is the copyright owner.

Re-use

If you would like to re-use the information supplied with this response
please contact TfL using the details provided in the attached letter.
Requests for re-use will be considered in accordance with the Re-use of
Public Sector Information Regulations 2005.

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