CSA Night Tube Recruitment
Dear Transport for London,
I am aware you recently ran a recruitment campaign for Customer Service Assistant - Night Tube. This was advertised under campaign code 037232. Partway into the campaign, the code was changed to 038107. Further into the campaign, it was delayed with no update forthcoming as to the progression of the recruitment process.
I would like to request information, (including a summary of the reasons behind), the decision to both change the recruitment code and delay the recruitment. The information I am requesting would include, for example, emails between any relevant persons discussing the recruitment, the reasons behind the change (in code) and delays, discussions around what would be done with the campaign, etc, and any discussions around the expected resumption of the recruitment (if any). I would obviously ask that any emails as part of this would be appropriately redacted to remove personal information to ensure a release is compliant with GDPR and the FOI act.
I would also like to know how many, (if any), persons under this recruitment campaign (of either code) reached a stage further than AC1. If so, I would like to know how many people progressed to each stage and at what date.
If any one specific aspect of this request, or (for example) the release of one specific piece of information (which could not be appropriately redacted) would lead to the declining of the request, please remove this specific asked (or piece of information) from the request (or the prepared response), and process the rest of this request without that which would cause it to be declined.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Flateu
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 2884-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 13
March 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube Recruitment.
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 11 April 2022. We publish a substantial
range of information on our website on subjects including operational
performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance and our
financial performance. This includes data which is frequently asked for in
FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.
We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 2884-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 13
March 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube Recruitment.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. Your
request is as follows:
I am aware you recently ran a recruitment campaign for Customer Service
Assistant - Night Tube. This was advertised under campaign code 037232.
Partway into the campaign, the code was changed to 038107. Further into
the campaign, it was delayed with no update forthcoming as to the
progression of the recruitment process.
I would like to request information, (including a summary of the reasons
behind), the decision to both change the recruitment code and delay the
recruitment. The information I am requesting would include, for example,
emails between any relevant persons discussing the recruitment, the
reasons behind the change (in code) and delays, discussions around what
would be done with the campaign, etc, and any discussions around the
expected resumption of the recruitment (if any). I would obviously ask
that any emails as part of this would be appropriately redacted to remove
personal information to ensure a release is compliant with GDPR and the
FOI act.
I would also like to know how many, (if any), persons under this
recruitment campaign (of either code) reached a stage further than AC1. If
so, I would like to know how many people progressed to each stage and at
what date.
I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested, however it
is not possible to source it all within the costs limit for responding to
requests as set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under
section 12, a public authority such as TfL is not required to provide
information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that
information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from
elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18
hours work.
Firstly by way of background, we can advise that the Customer Service
Assistant (CSA) requisition you have enquired about remains live and all
candidates that had previously reached a specific stage remain within the
recruitment process for this role.
TfL has recently had a change in Recruitment Supplier and as part of our
intention to streamline our processes, existing applications were moved to
a new campaign requisition number on our internal recruitment system (from
037232 to 038107). We notified candidates of this change in December 2021
and that they would receive an automated email notification thanking them
for their application, which quoted the new campaign number. A holding
update was sent in January and a further update is planned shortly. The
delay in this recruitment is as a result of the change in the recruitment
supplier.
In your request you have asked for information behind the decision to
change the recruitment code and delay the recruitment to include emails
between any relevant persons discussing the recruitment and discussions
around the campaign ‘etc’. Your request would therefore capture all
information we hold around the decision to change the recruitment code and
about the delay in the recruitment – and this would include emails we hold
around the entire commercial tender process to change recruitment supplier
along with the project plan that was put together for the new supplier as
a result of the change in recruitment supplier. There is no quick or
efficient way of sourcing all of the material that falls within the scope
of your request and the time involved in trying to ascertain exactly what
is and is not held in relation to your request and then sourcing and
collating it would take a considerable amount of time to carry out and
would exceed the cost limit to undertake. We would have to review each
individual email to see whether it relates to your request – and there
have been multiple conversations about this over the last few months. In
addition, it would be difficult to be certain as to when we could be sure
that we had captured all the information in scope of your request and to
stop searching for any further information we hold.
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to
consider narrowing its scope to focus on the information that is of most
importance to you. Before doing so you may wish to review the advice and
guidance offered by the Information Commissioner on how best to access
information from public bodies, published on its website here (I would, in
particular, point you to the table of “Dos and Don’t’s” that can be found
halfway down the page):
[1]https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/off...
The narrower and more specific the scope of your request the more likely
it is we will be able to respond positively within the costs limit. Please
be aware also that the FOI Act pertains to recorded information only.
There is no requirement to create new information nor to source
information from third parties
In terms of numbers of applicants who have progressed, as stated above,
this recruitment campaign is active once again and candidates are being
progressed from the stage they had reached with the previous supplier.
Numbers of applicants each stage of the process can change on a daily
basis. It should also be noted that with a high applicant campaign such as
for CSAs, some candidates will have a longer wait for an invitation to
book an assessment than others due to the numbers involved and limited
assessment space for group assessments.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to
appeal.
Yours sincerely
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
From: FOI
Sent: 21 March 2022 15:48
To: 'Steve Flateu' <[2][FOI #844089 email]>
Subject: new foi ref 2884-2122 CRM:0138571
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 2884-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 13
March 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube Recruitment.
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 11 April 2022. We publish a substantial
range of information on our website on subjects including operational
performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance and our
financial performance. This includes data which is frequently asked for in
FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[3]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.
We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[4]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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
Dear FOI,
As per your recent response I would like to narrow the scope of the request to:
“ I would also like to know how many, (if any), persons under this recruitment campaign (of either code) reached a stage further than AC1. If so, I would like to know how many people progressed to each stage and at what date.”
I am aware this campaign is still ongoing. Please provide information to date.
Yours sincerely,
Steve Flateu
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 0016-2223
Thank you for your clarified request received by Transport for London
(TfL) on 6 April 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube
Recruitment.
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 6 May 2022. We publish a substantial
range of information on our website on subjects including operational
performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance and our
financial performance. This includes data which is frequently asked for in
FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.
We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 0016-2223
Thank you for your clarified request received by Transport for London
(TfL) on 6 April 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube
Recruitment.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Regarding a recent recruitment campaign for Customer Service Assistant -
Night Tube, you asked: I would also like to know how many, (if any),
persons under this recruitment campaign reached a stage further than AC1.
If so, I would like to know how many people progressed to each stage and
at what date.
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, 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
requests 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. In this instance, we
estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18
hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations),
exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
We estimate it would take in excess of 29 hours to answer your request for
information regarding this recruitment campaign, specifically to answer
the part of your request when you ask for the dates that individuals have
progressed to each stage in the recruitment process. This is because the
dates are variable and are specific to each individual therefore to
provide this information we would need to look at the individual records
we hold for each candidate to extract the dates candidates progressed to
the next stage of the process that you have requested and then collate
this information.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450
limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on
matters which are important to you.
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a
request for specific documents, TfL does 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. If you have specific questions relating to these
topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request
for any information held.
If you submitted a fresh request we could potentially provide data on the
numbers of candidates who have progressed from stage AC1 to AC2 and AC2 to
AC3, however it should be noted that this is an ongoing recruitment
campaign with multiple groups being assessed on a regular basis, so any
numbers would only be a snapshot of the position at the time and will
change as and when more candidates are seen.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached
information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
From: FOI
Sent: 07 April 2022 13:27
To: 'Steve Flateu' <[1][FOI #844089 email]>
Subject: new foi ref 0016-2223 CRM:0138618
Dear Mr Flateu
TfL Ref: 0016-2223
Thank you for your clarified request received by Transport for London
(TfL) on 6 April 2022 asking for information about CSA Night Tube
Recruitment.
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 6 May 2022. We publish a substantial
range of information on our website on subjects including operational
performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance and our
financial performance. This includes data which is frequently asked for in
FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[2]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.
We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[3]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
Sara Thomas
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
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