Whitechapel Mission Announcements

The request was partially successful.

Dear Transport for London,

Under the Freedom of Information act, I would like to request any internal documents connected to the decision to play announcements on the East London Line encouraging the public not to give money to beggars, and instead to give to Whitechapel Mission.

Yours faithfully,
Finlay Cox

FOI, Transport for London

Dear Mr Cox

 

TfL Ref: FOI-2970-1920

 

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 4
January 2020.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and TfL’s information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 31 January 2020.

 

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

 

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

 

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

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FOI, Transport for London

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Cox

 

TfL Ref: FOI-2970-1920

 

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 4
January 2020.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. You
asked:

 

Under the Freedom of Information act, I would like to request any internal
documents connected to the decision to play announcements on the East
London Line encouraging the public not to give money to beggars, and
instead to give to Whitechapel Mission.

 

On London Overground’s East London Line, there were growing concerns over
people begging on trains and in stations, both in terms of safeguarding
vulnerable people but also dealing with the aggressive and antisocial
nature of some of the begging which was intimidating for staff and
customers. TfL, Arriva Rail London (who operate train services on the
line, under a concession agreement) and the British Transport Police have
been working together to tackle the issue while helping to ensure that
people who are in need of support are directed to appropriate support
services.

 

We know from recent petitions and customer feedback that our customers
want to help and encouraging people to give to charities, rather than
giving directly to people begging is one way they can do this. This has
led to us trialling a new communication approach to let our customers know
how they can help rough sleepers and those begging on our services.

 

We are trialling the use of announcements, messages on passenger
information system and posters to provide information to customers letting
them know that they can donate to the East London Line’s chosen local
charity, Whitechapel Mission, which will help to ensure that their
donations are used carefully to support people in genuine need.

 

The Whitechapel Mission is very active in the local community and offers a
wide range of support services for people who need them.

 

Since the trial went live, Whitechapel Mission has seen an increase in
donations from London Overground customers, which has enabled them to
support and safeguard more vulnerable people.

                                                                              

We continue to work together to work together to ensure that the network
is and feels safe and secure for our staff and customers. We remain
committed to supporting the Mayor’s ambition to help people off the
streets and to safeguard the most vulnerable.

 

We cannot precisely confirm when the decision was made to play the
announcements; it was an iterative process over a long period of time
including email exchanges and weekly catch up meetings, which were not
formally recorded. There have been multiple people involved and not all
email communications specifically reference “Whitechapel Mission”
therefore we would need to use broader search terms such as
‘announcement’, ‘audio’, ‘recording’ or ‘homeless’ to conduct email
searches.

Therefore, 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.

The cost limit is on the time it would take to locate the information you
require from within what would be several hundred or more emails caught by
searches.

Each email caught by the search would need to be manually reviewed to
determine whether it’s concerning the decision to play the announcements.
Many of the hits would likely to be not relevant, duplicates, due to
emails being repeated within email chains. Whilst the actual number of
emails covered by your request might be a sub-set of the numbers the email
search would capture, it is the excessive work involved in having to
locate and extract those that are relevant and meet your request that
would be very burdensome.

 

Furthermore there are likely to be additional emails relevant to your
request that may not have been caught by the keyword searches and so we
would likely need to conduct further searches using additional keywords
and finding relevant members of TfL staff who would have had discussions
on this topic, to ensure that everything relevant has been located and
collated, which would of course increase the processing time required to
complete your request.

 

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. For
example, a request for specific policy documents or reports is less likely
to raise concerns about the processing time required to answer it. You may
also wish to limit your correspondence search to particular departments of
TfL or a specific period of time.

 

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 do not hesitate to contact me.

 

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

 

Yours sincerely

 

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

 

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

 

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Dear FOI,

Thank you for the information you've provided thus far.

I understand the financial and time constraints of providing all related data.

I will reconsider the request and respond in due course.

Yours sincerely,
Finlay Cox