Dear Mr Jeffrey

TfL Ref: 1686-2324

Thank you for your request received by us on 20 August 2023 asking for
information about correspondence  / meetings between TfL and the
University of Westminster Active Travel Academy.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. 

To enable us to assist with your request, please can you confirm which
specific area of interest or specific project or scheme you would like to
receive the correspondence for – from our initial enquiries there are a
significant number of TfL officers who have corresponded in some way with
the Academy over the time period of your request and if you were able to
provide the subject area you are interested in, this would enable us to
process your information request more efficiently.

The Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information
held by Transport for London. There are limits on the time that we are
required to spend determining whether we hold the information you are
requesting and the time spent locating, retrieving and extracting it.
Therefore 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 the
organisation.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a
request for specific documents, we do 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 the 20 working day deadline for responding to your
request will depend on when we receive satisfactory additional
information to help clarify your request.  

If we hear nothing further from you by 13 September 2023 your response
will be treated as a new request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your
request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Jeffrey

TfL Ref: 1686-2324

Thank you for your request clarified received by us on 23 August 2023
asking for  information about correspondence  / meetings between TfL and
the  University of Westminster Active Travel Academy relating to low
traffic neighbourhoods; traffic reduction schemes; and active travel
initiatives.

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 20 September 2023. 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

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Jeffrey

TfL Ref: 1686-2324

Thank you for your clarified request received by us on 23 August 2023
asking for information about correspondence  / meetings between TfL and
the University of Westminster Active Travel Academy on the subjects of Low
Traffic Neighbourhoods, (LTNs), traffic reduction schemes and active
travel initiatives.

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

Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between
representatives/employees of TfL and the University of Westminster’s
active travel academy between the period of 1 January 2023 to date.

Please also provide me with details on all meetings held between
representatives/employees of TfL and the University of Westminster’s
active travel team, including dates, times and meeting minutes.

My specific areas of interest are: low traffic neighbourhoods; traffic
reduction schemes; and active travel initiatives.

We are applying Regulation 12(4)(b) to your request as we believe that the
request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because locating, extracting and
collating all the information you have requested would impose unreasonable
costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of resources.

We conducted an organisation-wide search of correspondence held within our
email archive for all emails held by TfL containing the keywords "LTN" OR
"Active travel" OR "lower traffic neighbourhood" OR "traffic reduction" 
sent between 1/1/23 and 20/8/23 that involved an @westminster.ac.uk email
address. This is the most efficient way of ensuring that we capture all
the information being requested. This search generated hits or matches
totalling 3,263. A ‘hit’ refers to an email found within our IT system
that potentially fits within the scope of your request. Each email then
needs to be individually reviewed to establish whether it’s relevant to
the request and then we would need to collate those that are relevant,
removing any personal information and considering any exceptions that may
apply.

Reviewing such a significant volume of material to locate, extract and
collate those that are relevant to your request would present a
significant burden to limited and specialist resource and divert them from
their core functions. We do not consider this diversion of resource to be
reasonable in the circumstances.

The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which
requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the
exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that
the release of information would promote accountability and transparency
in public services. However, the time it would take to provide the
information you have requested would divert a disproportionate amount of
our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the
public interest favours the use of the exception.

We will consider your request again, if you are able to narrow its scope
so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information
you are seeking. You may find it more beneficial to ask for a specific
document or report, rather than a very broad request for correspondence
which is more likely to raise concerns around the resource required to
process the request, as well as incorporate information which would be
likely to be of limited value.

 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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TfL Ref: IRV-113-2324

Thank you for your email which was received by Transport for London (TfL) on 30 September 2023

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 27 October 2023. 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 J Jeffery

I am contacting you with regards to your email of the 1 October concerning
the response proved the FOI-1686-2324. Following your email 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.

To confirm, your original FOI request asked for the following - Please
provide me with copies of all correspondence between
representatives/employees of TfL and the University of Westminster’s
active travel academy between the period of 1 January 2023 to date. 
Please also provide me with details on all meetings held between
representatives/employees of TfL and the University of Westminster’s
active travel team, including dates, times and meeting minutes.

Following a request for clarification on the 23 August you advised  - My
specific areas of interest are: low traffic neighbourhoods; traffic
reduction schemes; and active travel initiatives.

In the reply of 20 September, it was explained that under regulation
12(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) , we are not
obliged to comply with a request(s) if we believe that it is ‘manifestly
unreasonable’ to provide all of the information you have requested, as it
would impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable
diversion of resources.

To explain further, the EIR allow public authorities to refuse a
request(s) for information which is manifestly unreasonable. The inclusion
of the word “manifestly” means that there must be an obvious or clear
quality to the unreasonableness. The purpose of the applied exception is
to protect a public authority from exposure to a disproportionate burden
or an unjustified level of distress, disruption or irritation, in handling
information requests. This exception can be used when the cost of
compliance with the request(s) would be too great or is vexatious. In
assessing whether the cost or burden of dealing with a request(s) is ‘too
great’, a public authority is required to consider the proportionality of
the burden or costs involved and decide whether they are clearly or
obviously unreasonable.

The Information Commissioners position is that there are occasions where
it is permissible to consider a number of EIR requests together when
deciding if they are manifestly unreasonable because of cost or burden.
This is in line with the approach to requests considered manifestly
unreasonable on the grounds that they are vexatious in the wider sense,
where the context in which they are made can be taken into account.

This means taking into account all the circumstances of the case
including:

- the nature of the request and any wider value in the requested
information being made publicly available;

- the importance of any underlying issue to which the request relates, and
the extent to which responding to the request would illuminate that issue;

- the size of the public authority and the resources available to it,
including the extent to which the public authority would be distracted
from delivering other services; and

- the context in which the request is made, which may include the burden
of responding to other requests on the same subject from the same
requester.

When requests such as above are received the FOI Case Management Team are
able to carry out company wide email searches using a tool called
eDiscovery. This provides the ability to use ‘keyword’ search criteria
(taken from the request) to return a ‘hit’ result of emails and/or email
chains which contain any iteration of the keyword search terms.  As
advised in response to your request based on the informaion you provided,
the FOI Case Management Team carried out a TfL company wide email search
using the ‘key word criteria of “LTN” OR “Active Travel” OR “Low Traffic
Neighbourhood” OR “Traffic Reduction” sent between your specified time
period of 1 January 2023 and 20 August 2023.  This returned a ‘hit’ result
of 3263 emails and/or email chains.

Prior to any disclosure, these 3263 results would require a member of
staff to manually review each individual ‘hit’ to determine if it fell
within the scope of your request and if any exceptions would apply to the
information (for example the redaction of personal data) as there is no
other way available.  If we used a very conservative estimate of 2 minutes
per email / email chain (although the panel believe that this average of 2
minutes is likely to be slightly higher) this would equate to
approximately 108 hours of staff time and resource.  This wide cast of
correspondence you seek would be an exorbitant task to undertake and will
impose significant and unjustified staff resource diverting them away from
their core roles within the organisation..

TfL’s FOI Case Management Team adhere to the Information Commissioners
(ICO) guidance on the application of section 14(1) under the Freedom of
Information Act which, as outlined above, is one of the indicators that
the ICO measures against when considering if a request has an “obvious or
clear quality of unreasonableness” under regulation 12(4)(b). This is
described by the ICO as “The effort required to meet the request will be
so grossly oppressive in terms of the strain on time and resources, that
the authority cannot reasonably be expected to comply, no matter how
legitimate the subject matter or valid the intentions of the requester”.

Additionally the ICO’s guidance advises that consideration is given to
whether the request -

• Imposes a burden by obliging the authority to sift through a substantial
volume of information to isolate and extract the relevant details;

• Creates a burden by requiring the authority to spend a considerable
amount of time considering any exemptions and redactions.

In relation to the application of regulation 12(4)(b) to refuse your
requests we consider that all of these elements are met. The above makes
no judgement on the motive of a request but does focus on the burden
created. As advised the information you seek cannot be easily provided and
would be a huge task on what is a limited resource but we do wish to
clarify that whilst the review does agree that your request appropriately
engages regulation 12(4)(b), this does not reflect a conclusion that it
has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our
resources.

We are fully aware of the importance of accountability and the strong
argument it provides for the release of information that enables the
public to satisfy themselves that we as an authority have the appropriate
mechanisms and due diligence in place, however we maintain that the time
it would take to provide the all the information you have requested would
divert a disproportionate amount of resources from its core functions.
Therefore on balance we consider that the public interest currently
favours the use of the exception and the application of regulation
12(4)(b).

For further information the following decision notices which have been
issued by the ICO provides examples of a similar nature whereby is was
concluded that regulation 12(4)(b) had been appropriately engaged

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

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

[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

[5][TfL request email]

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