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Jacobs review email correspondence

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Matthew Thompson

Dear Transport for London,

I would like to make the following request under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You will be aware that as a joint sponsor of Crossrail, Tfl and the Department for Transport commissioned Jacobs to produce a review into Crossrail's Master Operational Handover Schedule (MOHS)

Could you please send me any correspondence sent or received by members of the TfL board, and also Tfl's CFO Simon Kilonback, between January and July 2018 (inclusive) that make reference to Jacobs or the Jacobs review?

As you will be aware, the ICO considers official information held in private email accounts to fall under FOI, and as such I would expect this to include any correspondence sent and received from private emails as well.

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Thompson

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Thompson

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0377-1920

 

Thank you for your request received on 6 May 2019 asking for
correspondence regarding the Jacobs Review on Crossrail.

 

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 4 June 2019. 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

 

Gemma Jacob

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[3][TfL request email]

 

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Thompson

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0377-1920

 

Thank you for your request received on 6 May 2019 asking for
correspondence regarding the Jacobs Review on Crossrail.

 

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 we hold some of 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 over £450 to provide a response to
your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take
over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have
requested.

 

When requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case
Management team may use a search tool called Discovery Accelerator. This
allows us to conduct company wide email searches using keywords, dates and
email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are
looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a
better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then
return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating
to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that
email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term
at least once.

 

TfL Board members do not use a TfL email address but we have carried out a
pan-TfL search on all emails held that have been sent to/from any TfL
staff to the email addresses that we hold for Board members between the
requested period, January and July 2018 inclusive, using a keyword of
‘Jacobs’. We have also done a search for all of Simon Kilonback’s emails
using these parameters. These searches have returned a total of 540 hits.
It is likely that this number will include duplicates as well as emails
that are not caught by the request. However, we would still need to
manually review all of the emails identified by the search in order to
extract and collate the relevant emails.

 

You have also asked for correspondence held in private email accounts.
Therefore, in addition to the time taken to review the emails our searches
have identified, we would also need to identify and contact each Board
member who served during the time requested to retrieve any potentially
relevant emails that they hold. We would then need to review these emails,
including having to determine whether the information was held on behalf
of TfL or in another capacity.

 

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. In
order to refine your request you may wish to include the names of specific
Board members on which to search and/or identify additional keywords to
help identify those emails which are of interest.

 

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,
geographical area or specific departments of TfL.

 

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.

 

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

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

 

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Matthew Thompson

Dear Gemma,

Thank you for your email. I wonder if I might refine my request as follows:

If we simply looked at the emails of Simon Kilonback, would that reduce the burden below the cost limits?

If not, could I request simply any emails between Mr Kilonback and TfL bondholders, for the time period specified?

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Thompson

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Thompson

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0849-1920

 

Thank you for your revised request received on 24 June 2019 asking for
correspondence regarding the Jacobs Review on Crossrail.

 

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 23 July 2019. 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

 

Gemma Jacob

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[3][TfL request email]

 

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Thompson

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0849-1920

 

Thank you for your revised request received on 24 June 2019 asking for
correspondence regarding the Jacobs Review on Crossrail.

 

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

 

However, in accordance with Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act
we are still considering the balance of the public interest in relation to
a qualified exemption that applies to the requested information and have
not yet reached a conclusion. The exemption under consideration is section
43(2) – Commercial Sensitivity. It is estimated that a decision will be
reached by 20 August 2019 and I will write again to inform you of that
decision. However, we hope to be able to provide a response before this
date.

 

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to
appeal.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Gemma Jacob

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[1][TfL request email]

 

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Thompson

 

Our Ref:         FOI-0849-1920

 

Thank you for your revised request received on 24 June 2019 asking for
correspondence regarding Jacobs and the Jacobs Review on Crossrail. I
apologise for the delay in my response.

 

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.

 

The full Jacobs review is published on our website:
[1]http://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-crossra...

 

Please find the requested correspondence attached. A number of documents
related to the Crossrail project including Crossrail Board minutes,
Sponsor Board minutes and project updates are published on the TfL
website. Please note that we have not included any of the attachments
referred to in the emails as a large portion of them are already
published:

 

[2]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

[3]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

[4]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

[5]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

 

Included in the above pages are links to other work undertaken by Jacobs
on Crossrail, including the Project Representative Reports, Semi-Annual
Construction Reports, and the 2018 independent review of Crossrail’s cost
forecast:

 

[6]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

[7]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

[8]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...

 

Simon Kilonback was also copied into a series of emails during the
requested period in which documents from the Crossrail Board were
distributed. Minutes from these meetings are published in the above links.
An example of these emails is included on pg1 of the attached document and
we have not included the others.  Additionally, we have not included
emails where draft versions of a document have been discussed as the final
version has been included.

 

In accordance with the FOI Act, we are not obliged to supply some of the
information contained with the attached emails as it is subject to a
statutory exemption to the right of access to information under section
43(2).

 

Disclosure of some information regarding the proposed funding deal
prejudice TfL’s commercial interests because it provides details of our
funding strategy. This could affect the ongoing negotiations we are still
having with the DfT.

 

The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public
interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. In
this instance, it is considered that factors in favour of disclosure, such
as the general public interest in transparency and openness, are
outweighed by the public interest in our being able to effectively manage
the remainder of the Programme so as to obtain best value when spending
public money. 

 

In accordance with our obligations under Data Protection legislation some
information has been withheld from the attached correspondence, 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 of Article 5 of the General Data Protection Regulation
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’.

 

This exemption to the right of access to information is an absolute
exemption and not subject to an assessment of whether the public interest
favours use of the exemption.

 

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

Senior FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

[9][TfL request email]

 

 

 

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References

Visible links
1. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-crossra...
2. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
3. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
4. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
5. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
6. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
7. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
8. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publication...
9. mailto:[TfL request email]
10. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/

We don't know whether the most recent response to this request contains information or not – if you are Matthew Thompson please sign in and let everyone know.