Dear Transport for London,

FOI Request: Cycle Hire Contract - redacted information

Your Ref: FOI-0155-1011

Many thanks for providing the information in respect of my Q1.

I am writing to request an internal review of Transport for London's handling of my FOI request 'Cycle Hire Contract - redacted information'.

I wish to appeal your decision to refuse to provide the information for Q2-Q8. The grounds of my appeal are:

A) You applied a blanket refusal to the information as a whole, without looking at each item on a case-by-case basis. This is contrary to the rulings of the Information Tribunal in Guardian Newspapers & Brooke V ICO & BBC (para 87.2) (EA/2006/0011 & EA/2006/00110013)

"[...] the public authority is not permitted to maintain a blanket refusal in relation to the type of information sought. The authority may have a general policy that the public interest is likely to be in favour of maintaining the exemption in respect of a specific type of information, but any such policy must be flexibly applied, with genuine consideration being given to the circumstances of the particular request"

Different levels of prejudice & public interest will apply to different items, so I would request that you re-examine each item as a result.

B) You said that disclosure is "likely to be prejudicial to the commercial interests of TfL and/or Serco".

"Likely to prejudice" is referred to by the Tribunal in John Connor Press Associates Ltd v ICO (EA/2005/0005):

"We interpret the expression “likely to prejudice” as meaning that the chance of prejudice being suffered should be more than a hypothetical or remote possibility; there must have been a real and significant risk."

I would request that you review your balance of the public interest test given this lower level of potential prejudice and its effect on the balance of the public interest test, in conjunction with the useful guidance provided in the ICO's Line to Take LTT13 http://foiwiki.com/foiwiki/index.php?tit...

C) You said that disclosure would prejudice subsequent "future re-procurement TfL might do for the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme". Also in John Connor Press Associates Ltd v ICO (EA/2005/0005), the Information Tribunal ruled that this argument needs to "depend on the nature of the information and the degree of similarity between the two transactions".

Given the bespoke and individually negotiated nature of the current contract with Serco, I have doubts that any future contract would be identical (or at least very similar) to this one.

There are further public interest arguments in favour of disclosure:

- it would enable other companies to compete on an equal footing to Serco, without it retaining its unfair advantage of having sole access to the information.

- In the Information Tribunal hearing of the DoH v ICO (EA/2008/0018) the Tribunal warned against ‘cosy’ relationships that can develop between public authorities and incumbent contractors in long running contracts. The Tribunal pointed out that whilst such relationship may allow the smooth running of a contract they can also reduce innovation and value for money. Serco has a long standing relationship with TfL providing many of its services (eg Traffic Signals, DLR, etc).

E) I separately dispute that Section 43(2) applies to every item of information you have withheld. Please re-examine this for the following items.

- Q2 about Liability

- Q3 for the name of the Guarantor (and possibly for the trigger level)

- Q4 for information on the SLAs

- Q8 for a list of section/paragraph headings from Schedule 28

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cy...

Yours faithfully,

Alex Skene