FOI - Night Czar [Jun 2024]

Your request 

1. A copy of Amy Lamé’s (London’s night czar) diary from 1st January 2021 - 2024. If this falls outside the FOI cost limit, please can you provide her diary records for 1st January 2023 - present.
2. How many nighttime surgeries has Ms Lame hosted during her time as London’s night czar?
3. How many pubs/clubs has Ms Lame saved from her closure during her time as London’s night czar?
4. How many Night Time Economy Borough has she attended during her time as London’s night czar?
5. How many meetings has Ms Lame attended with each London Borough (broken down by borough and year please)
6. How many foreign trips has Ms Lame been on during her time as London’s night czar?
7. Please can you outline the costs of these foreign trips?

Our response

1. Unfortunately, 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.

We have estimated that it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.

We refused a similar request for a two year period. In this instance, we exported the Night Czars diary for the period specified and there were approximately 3000 entries. There is no data filter at our disposal to distinguish between whether those meetings occurred, or were personal appointments or for information only. To establish whether a meeting falls within the scope of your request would require further examination of each diary entry. As an initial estimate we believed that it would take an average of 5 minutes to verify each entry and would therefore take 250 hours of staff time to comply with your request.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to
consider narrowing its scope to a 3 month period for a list of meetings only so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For example: FOI - Night Czar Diary [Jul 2023] | London City Hall

2. The Night Czar has undertaken 58 in-person and online night surgeries since 2017. This is alongside her other regular engagement with night time businesses and key stakeholders, which includes one-to-one meetings and roundtables with councils, venue owners and sector bodies.

3. The GLA does not hold the information within the scope of your request.

4. It is unclear what you are referring to here. We have interpreted this as the Night Time Borough Champion meetings. Since 2017, the Night Czar has chaired 28 meetings of the Night Time Borough Champions and the Night Time Policy Forum. For context, the format of the Night Time Borough Champions was changed in 2022, with this group now being made up of cabinet level councillors or committee chairs. The Night Time Policy Forum remains the open access group councillors, officers and other night time stakeholders.

5. The GLA does not hold the break down you are seeking. The Freedom of Information Act provides a right of access to recorded information. Public Authorities are not required to create new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request. We do not record which borough location each diary entry relates to.

6 and 7. This information is available at: Night Czar (3) | London City Hall