Thank you for contacting TfL’s FOI Case Management Team.  

Please note that if your email does not relate to a Freedom of Information
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Dear Carla Evanovich

TfL Ref: 2530-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7
November 2024 asking for information about the voiceover for the
Piccadilly line new trains.

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 5 December 2024. 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.

Please could you also resend the link you are referring to as the one you
provided didn’t appear to be the one you mentioned.

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

show quoted sections

Dear Carla Evanovich

TfL Ref: 2530-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7
November 2024 asking for information about the voiceover for the
Piccadilly line new trains.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.  I can
confirm that we hold some of the information you require. Your specific
questions and our replies are as follows:

1.     Please confirm how many of the 10 voices tested in your customer
research (the original shortlist) made it onto the shortlist for the new
voice alongside Eloise Carr and Elloise, and how long this shortlist was? 

Acapela Group was provided with TfL’s customer research findings to
identify the type of voice that we were looking for. Following this
research taking place, two participants were highlighted as having some of
the preferred characteristics. Acapela Group independently sourced and
provided TfL with eight new voices that were not part of the customer
research. All ten samples were reviewed and considered before ‘Elloise’
was selected. 

2.     How were those who did not participate in the customer research,
such as Elloise, recruited and chosen for the shortlist for the new voice
- what was the 'audition' process Eloise Carr mentions, what was the
criteria for passing and who made the recruitment decisions? 

The new Piccadilly line trains are being built for TfL by Siemens
Mobility. As part of this contract, Siemens are responsible for providing
a working digital voice system. Siemens subcontracted provision of this
service to Acapela Group, who were responsible for sourcing and providing
TfL with eight voices for review. We are unable to comment on how these
voices were sourced as this process was undertaken by Acapela Group. 

3.     How many stages of evaluation were there to whittle the shortlist
down to the two final voices, Eloise Carr and Elloise, and how were these
evaluations conducted? 

There was no linear process with official shortlisting or defined stages
of evaluation. Varying factors such as cost, delivery time scales,
availability and negotiations between voice artists and Acapela Group
played a role in decision making and changed frequently during this time.
Internal reviews of the voices supplied by Acapela Group were evaluated
based upon artists’ suitability, availability and cost. 

4.     In response to Q4 of FOI 0067-2425, you attach email correspondence
from Adrian Hieatt to Eloise Carr stating that 'no decisions have been
made yet'. Since this point there must have been further communication
between TfL and Eloise Carr to advise that she was in the final two on the
shortlist and was ultimately unsuccessful, as she says she was told.
Please disclose any correspondence with Eloise Carr since the email
attached in FOI 0067-2425. 

Please find the requested emails attached. There was no formal
notification process to inform participants of the customer research that
they were unsuccessful, as the original intention of the research was to
test the types of voices customers responded well to rather than to find a
voice for the new Piccadilly line trains. The decision to choose
‘Elloise’, who was not one of the voices tested in the customer research,
was made over two years after the original research was carried out. We
are unable to comment on Acapela Group’s internal communication processes
with regards to the voices they shared with TfL for review.

Please note that in accordance with TfL’s obligations under Data
Protection legislation some 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 legislation, specifically the first
principle 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 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 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

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

TfL RESTRICTED

From: FOI
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2024 11:14 AM
To: Carla Evanovich <[1][FOI #1200484 email]>
Subject: new foi ref 2530-2425 CRM:0138102

Dear Carla Evanovich

TfL Ref: 2530-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 7
November 2024 asking for information about the voiceover for the
Piccadilly line new trains.

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 5 December 2024. 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.

Please could you also resend the link you are referring to as the one you
provided didn’t appear to be the one you mentioned.

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

show quoted sections

Thank you for your email which was received by Transport for London (TfL) on 30 November 2024.

You have expressed 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 3 January 2025 . 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 contact me.

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

show quoted sections

Dear Carla Evanovich

I am contacting you in relation to your request for an internal review
concerning the response provided to FOI-2530-2425. Following your email of
30 November a review has been carried out by an independent review panel
(‘the panel’) consisting of individuals who were not involved in the
handling of your request. Please accept my apologies for the delay in
responding.

To confirm your original FOI request asked for the following -

1) Please confirm how many of the 10 voices tested in your customer
research (the original shortlist) made it onto the shortlist for the new
voice alongside Eloise Carr and Elloise, and how long this shortlist was?

2) How were those who did not participate in the customer research, such
as Elloise, recruited and chosen for the shortlist for the new voice -
what was the 'audition' process Eloise Carr mentions, what was the
criteria for passing and who made the recruitment decisions?

3) How many stages of evaluation were there to whittle the shortlist down
to the two final voices, Eloise Carr and Elloise, and how were these
evaluations conducted?

4) In response to Q4 of FOI 0067-2425, you attach email correspondence
from Adrian Hieatt to Eloise Carr stating that 'no decisions have been
made yet'. Since this point there must have been further communication
between TfL and Eloise Carr to advise that she was in the final two on the
shortlist and was ultimately unsuccessful, as she says she was told.
Please disclose any correspondence with Eloise Carr since the email
attached in FOI 0067-2425.

Following the response provide to FOI-2530-2425, your subsequent email of
30 November stated -

Firstly, the notion in your response to Q3 that there was no shortlist
("There was no linear process with official shortlisting or defined stages
of evaluation.") directly contradicts what was said in the email from
Adrian Hieatt to Eloise Carr sent on 07 April 2021 at 14:12, shared as an
attachment in FOI 0067-2425 ("I'm putting together a new shortlist - and
you're still on it"). Therefore, as I asked in Q3, please can you clarify
exactly how these evaluations to arrive at the 'new shortlist' and any
other shortlists following this were carried out? If not, please explain
the discrepancy between your answer and Adrian Hieatt's email.

Regarding the forum post link you requested me to resend, it was the
correct link in my original request. I have copied the relevant text from
the forum post for your information below:

"I decided to email Eloise Carr to ask if she was the voice. I know that
TFL said she was not but they are also well known for making mistakes so i
wanted to confirm. Eloise Carr confirmed to me that it was not her. But
she said she that in the end TFL reduced the shortlist to two people (her
and someone else) and she was told the voice selected was a professional
voiceover artist who had the same name Elloise (just a slightly different
spelling) who had also auditioned."

There must have been communication between TfL and Eloise Carr for her to
arrive at the conclusion, and share with a member of the public via email,
that she was in the 'final two' and lost to another voice artist named
Elloise during the selection process. I am re-stating my ask for any and
all correspondence between TfL and Eloise Carr since FOI-0067-2425. Your
answer indicates that there has been no further communication between TfL
and Eloise Carr since 09 April 2021 11:40, but given the above I believe
this to be incorrect. Please note that correspondence is a general term
for all forms of communication, including letters, emails, instant
messaging, texting, and/or phone calls. I understand that there is a
personal relationship between Adrian Hieatt and Eloise Carr, but please be
reminded that Section 3(2)(b) provides that, in circumstances where
another person holds information on behalf of a public authority, the
information is considered to be held by the authority for the purposes of
FOIA.

Finally, I do not believe the level of redaction in the emails attached in
response to Q4 is justified. How can entire emails be cited as exempt in
accordance with Section 40, particularly when they regard a topic that is
non-confidential?

Firstly with regards to Q3 and ‘shortlist’ evaluations, the panel have
been advised that in 2020, the Customer Insight team asked Visual Services
to provide some professional voiceover samples to inform discussions about
voice types for announcements. Professional voiceover artist Eloise Carr
was one of these samples, alongside other voice examples. Later, in 2021,
it was then decided that a detailed programme of customer research should
be carried out, by our agency 2CV, to understand our customers’ opinions
on a wide range of voice types, accents, ages and so on, that represented
the diversity of London. At that stage, the Customer Insight team (who
were responsible for coordinating this customer research) asked Visual
Services for a group of 10 voices (5 male and 5 female) for use in this
research. Eloise Carr's voice was one of the voices used in the customer
research, because her voice type was felt to reflect the ask of the brief,
alongside a range of other voice types, all of whom were professional
voiceover artists and none of whom were paid.

Therefore, the email to Eloise Carr referring to her voice ‘still’ being
on a list describes the fact that her voice was initially listened to, and
then was used in the customer research that followed. We acknowledge that
the term ‘shortlist’ may have been confusing in this context. The email in
question was sent before the customer research was carried out. None of
the people who provided examples or samples of their voices for this
project were paid for that, and no contracts were established either. The
only payment and contract agreement that took place was between
Acapela/Siemens and ‘Elloise’, the person who was eventually selected. We
are currently reviewing our approach to Digital Voice Announcements, part
of which will include working to improve our governance to ensure that our
processes are as clear and transparent as possible moving forward.

Concerning your request for “any and all correspondence between TfL and
Eloise Carr since FOI-0067-2425”  the appropriate individuals within TfL
have confirmed to the panel that the email supplied to you in the previous
FOI response is the only held written communication recorded that is with
scope of this request. However, we can advise that there were phone calls
with Eloise Carr during that specified period, some of which may have
contained brief updates or mentions of this work. However these calls were
not recorded and therefore we do not hold them.

Finally with regards to the application of s40(2) to remove personal
information from emails disclosed in response to FOI-2530-2425, the panel
have reviewed the email contents and agree that s40(2) has been correctly
engaged on this occasion. The information that has been redacted does not
fall within the scope of your request and is in its nature inherently
personal information relating to third party individuals.

The GDPR only permits the disclosure of personal information to a third
party in very limited circumstances, and usually requires the application
of one of the exemptions in the Data Protection Act (DPA). In this case
none of the relevant exemptions would apply and in any event, any
disclosure would still need to be consistent with one of the conditions of
the DPA. Information provided in response to requests made under the
Freedom of Information Act are classed as ‘disclosures to the public at
large’ as well as being published onto TfL’s website in line with our
transparency commitments. The panel agree it is highly likely that
individuals would be identifiable from the information that you seek and
would provide third parties with personal information. Indeed the panel
are confident that in different circumstances you would also expect the
same level of privacy in relation to your own personal information being
disclosed into the public domain if requested by a third party. TfL have a
duty of confidentiality and all members of staff and customers have a
legitimate expectation that personal information would be confidential and
not disclosed into the public domain without their prior consent.

As outlined above, the first GDPR data protection principle requires that
processing of personal data is lawful, fair and transparent. As there is a
presumption of confidentiality by individuals concerning personal
information held and the panel feel that disclosing the information you
seek in response to your request would establish an unlawful precedent.
The panel feel that the disclosure of the information that you seek would
not only significantly aid the identification of specific individuals, it
would also be unfair. The panel also consider that disclosure would be
likely to breach the first data protection principle on the basis that it
would not meet the fairness or the transparency requirements of the first
data protection principle.

Further information on section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act and
can be found on the Information Commissioners website:

[1]https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...

[2]https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gui...

[3]https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-tak...

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
([4]www.ico.org.uk).

Yours sincerely

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

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