Cost of damage by motor vehicles to TfL infrastructure

The request was refused by Transport for London.

Alexander Baxevanis

Dear Transport for London,

Could you please provide the following information:

1) How many instances have there been in the last 5 years where TfL has had to repair or replace infrastructure (including but not limited to traffic lights, street lighting, bollards, bus shelters, street signage) because said infrastructure had being damaged as a result of a collision with a motor vehicle of any sort

2) How much money has TfL had to spend in order to repair or replace that infrastructure

3) How much of that money has TfL successfully recovered from the responsible party (vehicle driver/owner/operator), through their motor vehicle insurance or otherwise

Yours faithfully,

Alexander Baxevanis

David Walters left an annotation ()

It looks like this request has been lost by TfL. Are you going to chase it Alexander?

Alexander Baxevanis

Dear Transport for London,

Your response to this request appears to be late - could you please update me on its progress?

Yours faithfully,

Alexander Baxevanis

FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

 

Dear Mr Baxevanis

Thank you for your email received by us on 17 August 2017 asking for
information on damage caused to TfL infrastructure by motor vehicles. I
sincerely apologise for the delay in replying.

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

 

You asked:

 

1) How many instances have there been in the last 5 years where TfL has
had to repair or replace infrastructure (including but not limited to
traffic lights, street lighting, bollards, bus shelters, street signage)
because said infrastructure had being damaged as a result of a collision
with a motor vehicle of any sort

 

2) How much money has TfL had to spend in order to repair or replace that
infrastructure

 

3) How much of that money has TfL successfully recovered from the
responsible party (vehicle driver/owner/operator), through their motor
vehicle insurance or otherwise

 

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 significantly exceed the appropriate limit
to provide a response to your current request. This is because relevant
information which would fall within scope of this request covering the
past five years is not recorded separately and would require examining the
fault history of all 6000+ installations in detail which we estimate would
take several hundred hours to do. We only cost up claims not incidents,
and we only pursue a claim if we have significant evidence of the
incident.  Under our new contract (since November 2014) the risk falls to
our contractor. However, under the previous contract, the costs of
equipment and labour were not separated out from the general costs of
equipment and the maintenance contract.  

 

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 may be able to provide information on the number and value of
claims pursued for a particular period, and our claim success rate.  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 us. 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,
geographical area or specific departments of the organisation. 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.

 

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

 

 

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London