The following request for information pertains to Help Points provided within stations operated by London Underground. If you do not hold the information for these Help Points specifically, but do for all TfL Help Points, please treat this request as pertaining to those instead. 1. Please provide a breakdown (either by number or percentage) of Help Points whose Emergency buttons are connected to: - The station's control room - A control room for a nearby station but not the station on which the Help Point is located - A signal box, service control centre, or similar location - A central call handling point - Another location 2. Please provide the same info as in (1) for the Information button. 3. Please indicate what category of information (e.g. platform number) is made available to the person who answers Emergency and Information calls from a Help Point. 4. Please indicate the average time between button pressed and call answered for Emergency calls and for Information calls from Help Points, as well as the period over which this was calculated (e.g. data from the past year). 5. Please indicate the average length of Emergency calls and of Information calls from Help Points, as well as the period over which this was calculated (e.g. data from the past year). 6. Please indicate the number of Emergency and Information calls from Help Points over the past year. If information for the past year is not available, please provide this information for the past month. If information for the past month is not available, please provide this information for a reasonably similar period.

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TfL Ref: FOI-1867-1920

Thank you for your email of 19^th September 2019 asking for information about Help Points on the London Underground.

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

I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. However, we estimate that to source the information to answer your questions would exceed the costs limit for responding to FOI cases as set out in section 12 of the FOI Act. Under section 12 of the Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, and then locating, retrieving or 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 – equivalent to 18 hours work.

For the most part, the information to answer your questions is not held centrally. The only way to source it would be to obtain data from the local level. Given there are 270 London Underground stations on the network, with multiple platforms and Help Points, we do not believe it would be possible to source the information within the costs limit. However, that said, I can provide you with the following general information which I hope will be of some assistance.  

Help Points of differing types were installed at various stations as they were refurbished or upgraded. The way they operate differs from site-to-site, depending on when and where they were installed and the set-up of that station at the time. Generally speaking, we can say the following:

Questions 1 and 2:

Emergency Button: When pressed by the customer, this rings in the station control room (or the old supervisor’s office). If it not answered there within 30 seconds or so, it will divert, in most instances, to either the British Transport Police (BTP) or the London Underground Control Centre (LUCC). The majority of these calls will now divert to the LUCC rather than the BTP and a project is underway to convert remaining help points to this set-up.

Information Button: Originally, when pressed by the customer, these would ring in the station control room or supervisor’s office. In some instances, if the call is not answered, it will divert to our customer contact centre. However, in other instances, the call will remain unanswered unless there is a member of staff on the station and available to answer the call. Again, as part of the project mentioned above, it is planned that in future all information calls will be routed to the customer contact centre

Question 3: In relation to the emergency button, when the call is diverted to the LUCC, the controller who answers the call will know the originating station and the help point number from the telephone system display

Question 4: When an emergency call is diverted to the LUCC, it is presented in our priority queue as an emergency call and they are answered within a few seconds. Typically, this would be within 2 – 3 rings. From a customer perspective, this is on top of the time taken for the call to divert having first ran in the station office.

Question 5: We do not collect this data.

Question 6: Please see the attached spreadsheet. This details the number of calls received by the LUCC and so accounts for calls received on the emergency lines only. However, note this is not the same as the number of calls which required an emergency response. The majority are accidental operations, incorrect use of the emergency button (such as requests for travel information or help with ticketing) or there is no response from the call when answered. On average, only 1 or 2 calls per four week period would require an urgent response, such as an ambulance request or urgent assistance from staff on site. Additionally, stations and engineers test the emergency buttons periodically, so those calls are captured in the numbers but are not emergency calls as such.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely,

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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