Dear Sir/Madam, In your financial accounts for the financial year 2019/20 do you have a section for “losses and special payments”? 1. If so how much money was accounted for in the 2019/2020 financial year as being "losses and special payments”? (Please note l am aware that the loss may have occurred many years earlier but I am interested in items which were accounted for in the last financial year, irrespective or when the loss took place.) 2. Please detail the three largest single amounts within this total, giving a cost for each loss and a detailed description of the claim and the reason for the loss. NOTE: Linking me to your annual accounts might be sufficient to answer question 1, but it would not answer question 2. FAQ: What are "losses and special payments"? In your annual accounts there should be a special section where allowance is made for “Losses and Special Payments”. These should consist of the following Categories of Loss: • Loss of cash – due to theft, fraud, arson, neglect of duty or gross careless, overpayment of salary, fees and allowances and other causes including accidents. • Fruitless payments – a fruitless payment can’t be avoided because the recipient is entitled to it, even though the public authority will get nothing in return. In assessing a fruitless payment, there will always be a degree of blame. For example, payment for travel tickets or accommodation that has been wrongly booked. • Bad debts – an individual debtor is a case, not every single invoice. • Damage to buildings, fittings, furniture and equipment – examples of losses under this category are: losses by fire (other than arson) and losses by weather damage, or accident beyond the control of any responsible person. Categories of Special Payment • Compensation payments made under legal obligation – clear liability under a Court Order or legally binding arbitration award. This includes compensation for injuries to persons, damage to property and unfair dismissal. • Extra contractual payments to contractors – these are payments which are not legally due under the original contract but where there appears to be an obligation which the courts may uphold. • Ex-gratia payments – these are payments the public authority is not obliged to make or for which there is no legal liability. Examples of ex-gratia payments are: o Loss of personal effects, clinical negligence/personal injury, and settlement on termination of employment, extra statutory or extra regulationary payments and maladministration cases. o Special Severance Payments – these are paid to employees, contractors and others outside of normal statutory or contractual requirements when leaving employment in public service whether they resign, are dismissed or reach an agreed termination of contract

---

TfL Ref 0831-2021

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 15 August 2020 asking for information about our financial accounts for 2019/20 and any losses and special payments.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

Please see the link to our annual report for the financial year 2019/20 below. We do not have a section called ‘losses and special payments’ but our full statement of accounts can be viewed on our website:  http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-annual-report-2019-20.pdf

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, TfL was on track to further reduce its net cost of operations to around £200m by the end of 2019/20. However, the impact of Covid 19 in 2019/20 was around £220m - meaning that it was only reduced to £423m. Even including these impacts, TfL has reduced its net cost of operations by more than £1 billion between 2015/16 and 2019/20.

The impact of current circumstances on TfL’s resources means we are not able to answer FOI requests readily and we ask that you please do not make a request to us at present.

Answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. In any event, please note that our response time will be affected by the current situation.

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

Back to top

---