Harvey Addington
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
06 November 2020
Dear Mr Addington
I am writing in response to your Freedom of Information request for the automated announcement
sound files of our railway station announcements.
I can confirm that the station announcements are held for our managed stations, however this
information is exempt from disclosure because the cost of retrieving the information would exceed
the “appropriate limit” that is set out in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Section 12 of the FOIA allows a public authority to refuse a request if the cost of fulfilling it would
exceed the appropriate limit of £450. This equates to 18 hours work at a set rate of £25 per hour.
To explain why the cost is prohibitive, our supplier Worldline, provides and maintains the Customer
Information System (CIS) at York and Newcastle stations. This is also being rolled out to the rest of
our managed stations in 2021. We do not hold the files on our servers and would need to request
Worldline to extract the recordings which does not form part of our service agreement. Thus, we
would need to pay Worldline an additional fee for this work to take place.
Worldline have confirmed that the work to fulfil your request would exceed the appropriate limit, it
would involve extracting in excess of 7800 audio files and determining which ones fulfil your criteria.
When we refuse a request, we try to provide any information that we might think could be helpful or
at least satisfy part of your request. Due to the nature of your request, we cannot advise you how to
narrow the scope as the work to identify and retrieve a small amount of files would still exceed the
appropriate limit.
If you are not content with this response, you have the right to ask for a review. In the first
instance you should contact me again to request this. If you choose to exercise that right, and are
not satisfied with the outcome of the review, you have the right to complain to the Information
Commissioner by contacting:
The Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF.
Yours sincerely,
Abigail Coates
London North Eastern Railway Limited
