Requests to DfT concerning enforcement against parking in cycle lanes

The request was successful.

Dear Transport for London,

Further to my request below:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...

Can you supply me with any correspondence with the Department for Transport concerning changes to ASL enforcement, cycle lane parking and other changes to the law concerning cycling made from May 2016 to present?

Yours faithfully,

Jim Killock

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Killock

 

TfL Ref: 2285-1718

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14
November asking for any correspondence with the Department for Transport
concerning changes to ASL enforcement, cycle lane parking and other
changes to the law concerning cycling made from May 2016 to present.

 

Your request will be processed by TfL, the Greater London Authority and
its subsidiaries to provide you with a response in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.

 

A response will be sent to you by 13 December. 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

 

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

 

Dear Mr Killock

 

TfL Ref: FOI-1661-1718, 1684-1718 and 2285-1718

 

Thank you for your emails received by us on 27 and 29 September and 14
November 2017 for various information on the Healthy Streets Portfolio
Board, information and correspondence on the design of the junction of
A3212 and Chelsea Bridge Road, and correspondence between TfL and the DfT
on cycle lane parking and enforcement of Advance Stop Lines (ASLs).

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Environmental Information Regulations and TfL’s information access
policy. I can confirm TfL does hold the information you require.  You
asked for:

 

1661-1718 due 22.11.17 -  Can you please send me the agendas, minutes and
attendance for / of the Healthy Streets Portfolio Board, in the period May
2016 to present.

 

1684-1718 due 27.10.17 - Can you supply me with your correspondence made
with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Council
in relation to the preparations of your 2015 design of the junction of
A3212 and Chelsea Bridge Road. I am specifically interested in anything
they suggested about the safety features, capacity and potential
acceptability of any approach made in the design, or any constraints they
may have imposed due to their control of Chelsea Bridge Road itself, so
that it is clear why TfL chose the design and whether it operated under
any constraints from the local councils.

I believe their is a strong public interest in this information, as the
design may have contributed to a cyclist fatality this week. While of
course “policy formation” can serve as an exemption, as the policy has
long since been formed, it should not need to apply in this case.

 

2285-1718 due 13.12.17 - Further to my request below:
[1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...
can you supply me with any correspondence with the Department for
Transport concerning changes to ASL enforcement, cycle lane parking and
other changes to the law concerning cycling made from May 2016 to present?

 

 

Given the extent of the information you are looking for, we are applying
Regulation 12(4)(b) as we believe that the requests are ‘manifestly
unreasonable’ because providing the information you have requested would
impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of
resources.   Although there is no specific time and cost limit provided
for under the EIR 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 of £450 set
by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees Regulations
2004).  This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the
activities described. We are applying this concept to your request under
EIR given the particular voluminous nature of your request and the burden
it would impose on TfL to comply with the three information requests you
have made, not including the requests from you that we have already
answered.

 

With regards to 1684-1718, the preparations for the 2015 design of the
junction of A3212 and Chelsea Bridge Road involved at least 10 TfL
officers who are known to have corresponded  with the Royal Borough of
Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Council between 2012-2016. It  is
estimated that it would take each officer a minimum of 1.5 hours to check
correspondence (more when there has been direct project involvement) and
an additional 5 combined hours to search drives across the three
departments who have been involved, thereby giving a total of 18 hours
alone for this request.

 

2285-1718 would require us to conduct a company wide search using computer
software to locate any emails or correspondence containing the words ASL,
cycling / law and cycle parking to ensure that all emails on these issues
were picked up.  It  should be noted that our email search facility does
not determine searches by department and so we would need to conduct a
search of the entire email archive across the whole organisation. This
would generate thousands of matches across TfL using these key words. We
would then need to manually review the results to determine which of the
results were sent to/from individuals employed within the relevant
business units at the time you have specified.

 

Additional time would also be needed to answer ref 1661-1718.

 

Please note that when considering whether the burden of answering requests
is unreasonable, we take into account the aggregate cost of answering
similar requests received within the previous 60 working days. We have
received six requests from you since 28 September.

 

We will consider your requests again, if you are able to narrow their
scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the
information you are seeking. If you have specific questions we will be
happy to consider those.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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References

Visible links
1. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...
2. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/

Dear Transport for London,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Transport for London's handling of my FOI request 'Requests to DfT concerning enforcement against parking in cycle lanes'.

Firstly, EU law takes precedence over UK law. You cannot apply an FoI cost exemption to information that must be given under EU regulations. You should reassess my requests to decide which must be considered under Environmental Information Regulations 2004, and only after that consider whether an FoI cost exemption should be applied.

With the remainder of the requests that must be dealt with under FoI, please note:

(1) With my request for information about cycle lane enforcement:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

This was a narrow follow up to a previous request which you successfully completed without complaint about time considerations:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...

I had asked for a simple clarification as to whether there had been correspondence after 2015 but did not receive a reply, hence the follow up request. If a further search is necessary, this can be limited to senior staff's correspondence with the DfT along the lines of your previous response.

(2) In relation to this request about Chelsea Bridge

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

RBKC have supplied their correspondence separately, so this can be discounted. Westminster Council however have lost their records:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

I would kindly ask that you proceed with this, given Westminster's unfortunate administrative failure, as the recent death of a cyclist here makes this information important for the public to know about.

(3) In relation to the request for minutes of the Agendas, minutes and attendance at the Healthy Streets Portfolio Board:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

I am somewhat surprised that this is causing difficulty in locating the material. This should surely be unproblematic. There may be costs associated with processing the material for redaction or exclusion but FoI exemptions do not apply to redaction or exclusion of material, only the cost of locating it.

In terms of precedence for cost purposes, where EIR 2004 does not apply, please process Item (3), followed by (1) and then (2).

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

Jim Killock

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Killock

IRV-121-1718

Thank you for your request for an internal review which was received on 25 October 2017.

You have stated that you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

The review will be conducted by an internal review panel in accordance with TfL’s Internal Review Procedure, which is available via the following URL:

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/internal-revie...

Every effort will be made to provide you with a response by 28 December 2017. 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 feel free to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Emma Flint
Principal Information Access Advisor
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

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Dear FOI,

Re: IRV-121-1718

It's been a while since this internal review was started (1 December 2017) – do you have an update on when I might expect your answer or conclusion?

Thank you,

Jim Killock

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Killock,

Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response to your request for an internal review.

I can confirm that the review process is nearing its conclusion and I am confident that I will be in a position to issue you with our response before the end of next week, although I am hopeful that I may be able provide the response sooner.

Once again, I apologise for the continued delay but please be assured your review is being worked on with a view to issuing a response as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Lee Hill
Senior FOI Case Officer

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

 

Dear Mr Killock,

 

Our Ref: IRV-121-1718

 

I am contacting you in connection with your request for an internal review
of TfL’s combined response to your requests for information under
reference numbers FOI-1661-1718, FOI-1684-1718 and FOI-2285-1718. Please
accept my apologies for the delay in our response.

 

The review has been carried out by a panel who were not involved in
preparing the original response following your email of 25 November 2017
regarding the refusal notice issued in accordance with Regulation 12(4)(b)
of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR).

 

The review panel has noted your response made reference to a refusal under
Regulation 12(4)(b) of the EIR but that a further reference was made of
the exemption set out in section 12 of the FOI Act to explain the
rationale behind the application of the exception. This appears to form
the basis of your complaint and so the panel have considered both whether
each request was considered within the correct legislation and whether the
exception was correctly applied in each instance.

 

When considering requests for information, the Case Officer will need to
identify the specific legislation which applies based on the information
being requested. I feel it would be useful at this stage to explain how
your requests were originally defined as a request under the EIR:

 

Regulation 2(1)(c) of the EIR states that ‘environmental information’ is
defined as (amongst other things) measures (including administrative
measures), such as policies, legislation, plans, programmes, environmental
agreements, and activities affecting or likely to affect the elements and
factors referred to in

·         the state of the elements of the environment, such as air and
atmosphere, water, soil, land, landscape and natural sites including
wetlands, coastal and marine areas, biological diversity and its
components, including genetically modified organisms, and the interaction
among these elements; and

·         (b) factors, such as substances, energy, noise, radiation or
waste, including radioactive waste, emissions, discharges and other
releases into the environment, affecting or likely to affect the elements
of the environment referred to in (a); as well as measures or activities
designed to protect those elements)

 

As your requests related to the Healthy Streets board, junction design and
matters concerning cycling more generally, it was determined that the
above criteria was met sufficiently to suggest that these requests should
be processed in accordance with the EIR, rather than FOI.

 

However the review panel disagrees with this interpretation for two of
your three requests, specifically FOI-1661-1718 and FOI-2285-1718. Whilst
it is reasonable to assume that some of the content of the Healthy Streets
Board meeting minutes and correspondence regarding various cycling law
matters may fall within the scope of EIRs, the panel felt that the
requests themselves should be processed under FOI. The panel did agree,
however, that EIR was the correct legislation to apply to request
reference FOI-1684-1718 which relates specifically to a junction design.

 

The panel then went on to consider the application of Regulation 12(4)(b)
to refuse your requests. As the FOIA fees regulations do not apply under
the EIR, there is no specific provision for the aggregation of
substantially similar requests for environmental information. The ICO’s
position, however, is that there may be occasions where it permissible to
consider a number of EIR requests together when deciding if they are
manifestly unreasonable on the grounds of cost. The costs of considering
if information is exempt can be taken into account as relevant arguments
under regulation 12(4)(b) and therefore the review was satisfied that TfL
did attempt to be fully compliant with the guidance issued by the
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the handling of your request.

 

However, as explained above, the panel felt that two of the requests fell
under the FOI Act and, as such, the time and resource required to process
these should have been separated from the EIR request. Under FOIA the cost
of considering whether information is exempt cannot be taken into account
under section 12 and so consideration should have been given only to the
time required to locate, extract and collate the requested information in
those two requests.

 

The panel has determined that both FOI requests were answerable within the
limits set out in section 12 of the Act and so these should have been
provided to you. As a consequence of this, we have simultaneously
re-processed these requests under FOI whilst conducting this review.

 

Please see the attached file containing the information we hold that is
relevant to FOI-2285-1718. Whilst the information we are providing was
generated after the date of your original request, we have provided this
additional information as a matter of courtesy so that you do not need to
resubmit this request. Please be aware that some personal data has been
redacted in accordance with Section 40(2) of the FOI Act. We can confirm
that, at the time of your request, no further information was held and
your response should have simply advised this at the time.

 

With regards to FOI-1661-1718, we have recently issued the requested
information in response to a similar request. You may therefore locate the
requested information at the following link:
[1]https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparenc...
. The panel can confirm that no information is held prior to January 2017
and so the information provided in the link is all of the information we
hold, and would therefore conclude your request.

 

However, in relation to FOI-1684-1718, the panel has concluded that
Regulation 12(4)(b) was correctly applied, even with the subsequent
revision of your request to only include emails to and from Westminster
City Council. A remote search was conducted of ten employees’ archived
emails that were identified as potentially holding information relevant to
your request. The search criteria was for all emails to/from an email
account with the suffix @westminster.gov.uk sent between 1 January 2012
and 31 December 2015 that contained one or more of the following keywords:
“design" "a3212" "Chelsea Bridge road" "CS8" "Chelsea Bridge".

 

This search returned with 1777 hits. A hit refers to an email located by
our search tool that potentially fits within the scope of your request.
These emails would each need to be manually reviewed to determine whether
they are caught by your request. Many of the hits are likely to be not
relevant, or duplicates, (due to emails being repeated within email
chains), as well as emails being forwarded internally for discussion
during this time period that contain a relevant email within its email
chain. Therefore the actual number of emails covered by your request will
be a sub-set of these hits. Upon reviewing these hits, it may also become
apparent that further searches could need to be conducted using different
keywords and/or different archived email accounts.

 

The only way to locate, extract and collate those that are relevant to
your request would be through a manual process of reviewing and then
compiling a separate document containing the relevant emails. To conduct
this task for such a large volume of emails would provide a significant
burden and therefore the panel agrees that Regulation 12(4)(b) applied to
this request.

 

However, the panel did note that your response did not address the public
interest test considerations when applying this exception, nor did it
provide sufficient advice and assistance to help you to submit a new, more
manageable request. Whilst we do acknowledge there is public interest in
disclosure to promote transparency and accountability of public
authorities, we consider that the of burden of retrieving, reviewing and
redacting the information would be disproportionate to the benefit of
providing it. Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport
service for London and we consider that answering this request would
represent a disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction
from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already
limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of
personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request
falls under Regulation 12(4)(b) of the EIR, this does not reflect a
conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue
burden on our resources.

 

By way of focusing your request to address the concerns outlined above,
you may wish to narrow your request to a specific time period and identify
specific, less recurring keywords contained in correspondence exchanged
between named individuals.

 

On behalf of TfL, please accept my apologies for the shortcomings in the
handling of your requests.

 

If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of this internal review, then it
is open to you to 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
([2]www.ico.gov.uk).

 

Yours sincerely

 

Lee Hill

Senior FOI Case Officer

 

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

 

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Dear FOI,

Thank you very much. In particular, I'm pleased to see the Healthy Streets Portfolio Board minutes are published as the result of a separate request.

Relating to correspondence with Westminster, I am surprised that the panel did not consider the original public interest question in the first request: the point was that someone has died at this junction, which really ought to count as a strong public interest. I also would point out that a generic search term like "design" is bound to generate a disproportionate number of hits compared with the other search terms mentioned, being "a3212" "Chelsea Bridge road" "CS8" "Chelsea Bridge".

I am therefore minded to appeal this part of the request to the ICO. Before I do so, I would of course be very content if you were able to consider revising that request by narrowing the search of correspondence to the terms "a3212" "Chelsea Bridge road" "CS8" "Chelsea Bridge", in the period 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2015, to Westminster City Council.

Please let me know if you are able to do this by March 16.

Yours sincerely,

Jim Killock

FOI, Transport for London

 

Dear Mr Killock,

 

Thank you for your further email.

 

To clarify on the basis for our decision, your request asked for the
following: “Can you supply me with your correspondence made with the Royal
Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster Council in relation to
the preparations of your 2015 design of the junction of A3212 and Chelsea
Bridge Road.”

 

As the focus of your request was specifically the design of the junction
(as well as some wider implications based around the design), the panel
felt that including the word “design” in any search for recorded
information would be essential to collating the number of emails
potentially held in relation to your request. It would be difficult to
conclude that we had sufficiently located all information regarding the
design of the junction without using the term ‘design’ in our search.
However, as my response outlined, upon reviewing the results of this
search, it may also become apparent that further searches could need to be
conducted using different keywords and/or different archived email
accounts.

 

The panel did consider the public interest in your request, particularly
in light of the incident you have referred to. However, it was felt that
the burden of locating, extracting and collating all information held
outweighed any benefit of providing this information. We expect it to be
very unlikely that the entirety of the information we hold is located
within the archived emails of just those initial ten email accounts and
the only way to ensure we have collated all information we hold that is
relevant to your request would be to widen the search further to all
archived TfL email accounts and, most likely, include additional keywords
that are more likely to locate information regarding ‘safety features’,
‘capacity’, ‘potential acceptability’ and ‘restraints’ which were also key
aspects to your request. This would clearly increase the number of emails
that we would be required to review but a number of hits was provided to
you to demonstrate that, even using what were considered to be restrictive
search terms, the volume of information we would need to review would mean
that Regulation 12(4)(b) applies.

 

Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London
and we consider that answering this request would have represented a
disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our
work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited
resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of
personnel. However we do wish to clarify that this does not reflect a
conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue
burden on our resources.

 

I have run a provisional search based on the latest search terms you refer
to below using those same ten employees who are likely to hold information
and this search has produced 102 hits. To reiterate, a hit refers to an
email located by our search tool that potentially fits within the scope of
your request. These emails would each need to be manually reviewed to
determine whether  they are caught by your request. Many of the hits are
likely to be not  relevant, or duplicates, (due to emails being repeated
within email chains), as well as emails being forwarded internally for
discussion during this time period that contain a relevant email within
its email  chain. Therefore the actual number of emails covered by your
request will be a sub-set of these hits.

 

Whilst this number of results is clearly more manageable, we don’t
consider that the results of this search would have sufficiently covered
either your initial or revised request for “all correspondence with
Westminster Council in relation to the preparations of your 2015 design of
the junction of A3212 and Chelsea Bridge Road” and this is why the
exception was upheld in that instance.

 

You are, of course, welcome to submit a new request using the terms
outlined in your email of 2 March and, as stated, we anticipate that this
is unlikely to raise the same concerns outlined previously.

 

Please confirm whether you would like us to proceed on this basis and we
will log and process this as a new request. Please be aware that we will
not be working on your request until we have received your confirmation.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Lee Hill

Senior FOI Case Officer

 

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

 

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