FOI - Applications to use Trafalgar Square [Jan 2024]

Your request

Please provide details and documents regarding any application to use Trafalgar Square where:

1. The application was made between November 1 2023 and today's date; and the application was to use the square between February 1 2024 and June 1 2024.
2. Confirm which applications have been granted for this period, as of today's date, and which rejected.
3. This should include, but not necessarily be limited to, communications between applicants and the GLA and internal communications within the GLA regarding those applications.

Our response

Please see the attached table which lists all activities scheduled to take place in Trafalgar Square from 1 February to 1 June 2024, received before 1 February 2024. 

The date is held once an application comes in, they are not authorised until all final documentation has been submitted and reviewed. 

Authorisation is usually sent in the weeks leading up to the activity date, as this allows for final amendments by the organiser.  

Dates are set many months in advance for annual cultural and sporting events organised or supported by the GLA. 

Please note that while the date is held once an application comes in, they are not authorised until all final documentation has been submitted and reviewed. Authorisation is usually sent in the weeks leading up to the activity date, as this allows for final amendments by the organiser.  

Dates are set many months in advance for annual cultural and sporting events organised or supported by the GLA. 

With regard to part 3 of your request, we have estimated that the cost of complying with this part of your request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity.

Section 12 of the Act provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request if the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. The aforementioned Fees Regulations stipulate that this limit is £450; calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described and equates to 18 hours of work.

To gather and redact all correspondence related to these applications would take a significant amount of time (potentially over 18 hours just for a single event). We have therefore refused this request under the cost limit provisions of section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and this response therefore constitutes a refusal notice under section 17(1) of the Act.

If you have any further questions relating to this matter, please contact us, quoting reference MGLA180124-4522.