The request went in at the end of 2013. You can read the post again here and only 18 months after the original request during which time the east cost franchise changed hands. East Coast (government owned) failed to reply for 14 months and when I wrote to Virgin trains (the new owners) earlier this year I didn’t expect much but today the reply arrived.
“I am contacting further to your correspondence regarding information relating to taxis arranged from London King’s Cross station.
I apologise for the delay in responding to you; regrettably an administrative error prevented a previous response from being sent and I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
You have requested to know the number of times we supplied taxis to passengers arriving at Kings Cross on delayed trains, the total cost of these taxis and the total number of passengers and taxis involved. We do not have records comprehensive enough to fully provide this information however we have reviewed our taxi invoices for 2014 which shows that in that year there was a total of 1800 taxi jobs arranged with a total cost of £254,024.62. Regrettably we are unable to advise of the number of people these taxi jobs were arranged for or the reason why the taxis were arranged as this information is not recorded.”
Well done to Virgin – a Blue Riband to you. Poor show from East Coast – a purple shirt and tie set for your avoidance of FOI for 14 months.
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