EIR - Booth Road [Sep 2026]

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I wish to receive:

1. Copies of all communication between yourself / GLA* / Mayor of London*, and Barratt, Aviva, and the management company, in relation to Booth Road.
2. Copies of all the 'key legal documents' you refer to, as well as correspondence from your legal team relating to Booth Road.

*Including any subsidiary

And

On 20 November 2025, you wrote "The legal obligation to seek adoption is in the lease". (See attached for full message).

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I wish to receive:

3. A copy of the lease you refer to, along with any other information you used in order to make that statement.
4. Copies of the emails exchanged with Barratt, Aviva, FirstPort and Innovus on the subject of adopting Booth Road.
5. Any other information held by GLA / Mayor of London, or subsidiaries (e.g. Royal Docks Team), in relation to ownership of Booth Road, planning conditions, or the discussion of its adoption. 

Our response

Lease

Please find attached: 

• Barratt Homes Ltd & Taylor Woodrow Developments Ltd - Conditional Agreement re Freehold adjacent to North Woolwich Rd; Thames Barrier Park East; Silvertown – 2004
• Barratt Homes Ltd & Taylor Woodrow Developments Ltd - Supplemental Agreement re Freehold Adjacent to North Woolwich Road; Thames Barrier Park East; Silvertown – 2006.
• Agreement Under Sections 38 and 278 of the Highways Act 1980 relating to the roads, sewers, verges, highways, footpaths, improvement works and associated works on land at and in the vicinity of North Woolwich Road, Silvertown, London, El6

Communications with Barratt, Aviva, and Firstpoint in relation to Booth Road.

Please find attached. Please note that some names of members of staff are exempt from disclosure under Regulation 13 (Personal information) of the EIR. Information that identifies specific employees constitutes as personal data which is defined by Article 4(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual. It is considered that disclosure of this information would contravene the first data protection principle under Article 5(1) of GDPR which states that Personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.

Any other information held by GLA / Mayor of London, or subsidiaries (e.g. Royal Docks Team), in relation to ownership of Booth Road, planning conditions, or the discussion of its adoption. 

Owing to the historic nature of the land interests involved and the extensive legacy information held by the GLA, including records inherited from the former London Development Agency, we are unable to comply with this element of your request. We consider it to be manifestly unreasonable under regulation 12(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).

Regulation 12(4)(b) permits a public authority to refuse a request where the burden of compliance would be clearly unreasonable. In reaching this decision, we have had regard to the findings of the Upper Tribunal in Craven v Information Commissioner and Department of Energy and Climate Change [2012] UKUT 442 (AAC), as well as the Information Commissioner's guidance and relevant Decision Notices, including FS50585926.

This element of your request seeks "any other information" relating to land ownership, planning conditions and adoption discussions, without any meaningful limitation as to timeframe, document type or subject matter. The information potentially falling within scope spans many years and is drawn from a substantial body of historic and legacy records. It is not held within a single, centrally indexed record set and would require extensive searches across multiple electronic and archived repositories, followed by the review of a significant volume of records to determine relevance and consider the application of any exceptions.

It is not possible to quantify the volume of information that may be held without undertaking the very exercise required to answer the request. However, we are satisfied that locating, retrieving, reviewing and assessing all potentially relevant material would require a considerable commitment of officer time and resources. We consider that this would impose a grossly disproportionate burden on the authority and significantly divert resources from its core functions and statutory responsibilities. We are therefore satisfied that regulation 12(4)(b) is engaged.

As regulation 12(4)(b) is subject to the public interest test, we have carefully considered the public interest in disclosure. We recognise the strong public interest in transparency, accountability and public understanding of environmental matters, and the presumption in favour of disclosure under the EIR.

However, we consider there to be a stronger public interest in ensuring that public authorities can carry out their statutory functions effectively and make efficient use of limited public resources. Compliance with this request would require a substantial and open-ended review of historic records, diverting staff from their day-to-day responsibilities and other statutory obligations for a significant period. The EIR are intended to promote transparency, but not at the expense of imposing a disproportionate burden on a public authority.

We have also taken into account that the request is framed extremely broadly. As a result, a significant amount of time and resource would be spent identifying and reviewing material which may ultimately add little to the information already available or provide limited additional public value. In these circumstances, we consider that the public interest in maintaining the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Under regulation 9 of the EIR, we have considered whether we can provide advice and assistance to help refine the request. However, the breadth of the request makes it difficult to identify a practical means of doing so without a clearer indication of the specific information, time period, documents or decisions of interest. Should you wish to submit a more focused request, we would be pleased to consider it.