FOI - ULEZ report costs [Oct 2023]

Your request 

1. Could you tell me the names of the authors and job titles who compiled the report - Inner London Ultra Low Emission Zone - One Year Report. Obviously as it was used to justify the Mayor's ULEZ expansion it is critical to know the expertise of those who compiled it.
2. Can you tell me if Gary Fuller at Imperial or anyone in Imperial's Environmental Research Group was paid, or given an honorarium for 'peer reviewing' the work.
3. Can you tell me if there were any complaints about the report or methodology and what those were.

Our response

In accordance with Section 40 of the Act, the names of some GLA members of staff (those below a certain level) are exempt from disclosure. 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.

Additionally, in considering our response we have also applied section 38 of the Act regarding health and safety. Section 38 provides an exemption from disclosing information if it would endanger any individual (including the applicant, the supplier of the information or anyone else). In the current environment we have significant concerns in releasing officer names in relation to the ULEZ. We have therefore applied exemptions to your question (1) under section 38 and section 40 of the Act.

The GLA paid Dr Gary Fuller £6,544.00 for expert review of the data, analysis methodology and review of the relevant sections of the final written report for two ULEZ progress reports, the Inner London ULEZ Six Month Report and the Inner London ULEZ One Year Report. The payment to academics to conduct peer reviews is standard practice.

Unfortunately, we have estimated that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the “appropriate limit” specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. 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.

The GLA has received a high volume of correspondence in relation to the ULEZ. The GLA does not log complaints relating to the work of Dr Fuller or the ULEZ progress reports separately from any other correspondence received about the ULEZ and it would not be feasible for us to extract the relevant data.

We have therefore refused this request under the cost limit provisions of section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and this letter therefore constitutes a refusal notice under section 17(1) of the Act.

Unfortunately because of the volume of correspondence held, this part of your request is so broad it is not possible to suggest a way in which you can refine your request to bring it within the acceptable fees threshold.