TfL Ref: 1919-1920
 
Thank you for your request received by us on 21 September 2019 asking for information about the maintenance of escalators in relation to an incident at London Bridge Underground Station on Sunday 27 January 2019. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding.
 
We are sorry to read of the circumstances behind your request for information. We offer a dedicated help and support service for people injured or affected by an incident on TfL’s services, which is available by calling our Sarah Hope line, on 0343 222 5678, Monday-Friday 08:00-18:00. More details of the service are on our website, at: https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/incident-support-service
 
Customer Services has been in contact with you seeking proof of identity in accordance with the first part of your request: ‘i) full records of any investigation in the accident’. In the meantime, the following parts of your correspondence have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require. You asked for:
ii) Maintenance records for a period of 3 months before and 3 months after the accident.
Managing customer accidental injuries on escalators is one of our key areas of focus. Ongoing work includes implementing tailored safety plans at our hotspot locations for customer accidents; ensuring that we have the right customer safety posters in the right places; make specific customer safety public announcements (PAs) and work with our front line teams on an ongoing basis to ensure we are aware of and understand the risks and that we implement appropriate improvement actions that are refreshed on a regular basis. In addition we have implemented initiatives to ‘nudge’ customer behaviour. These include blue foot prints on escalators to encourage customers where to stand, hold the hand rail messaging on handrails and red combs at the bottom on top of escalators to indicate the start and finish of escalators better. There is also a dedicated focus on reducing escalator injuries at London Bridge Underground Station.
To reduce numbers of incidents we are focused on both influencing customer behaviour and changing our infrastructure to remove/reduce risk. Both elements are integrated into a plan which is cascaded to each of the London Underground lines and stations with escalators. These plans are visualised, performance and delivery reviewed each week and action taken to improve performance where required (using a continuous improvement approach). For example, actions have included senior management team visits to hotspot locations to talk about the issues and challenges.
Please find attached the requested information concerning the escalator in question (referenced as Escalator 13 in the attached) that consists of:
 
London Bridge Service Sheets – maintenance records undertaken by our engineers.
 
Passenger Accident Escalator Inspection Forms.
 
Lift and escalator Inspection Forms.
 
Please note that in accordance with TfL’s obligations under Data Protection legislation some personal data has been removed, as required by section 40(2) of the FOI Act. This is because disclosure of this personal data would be a breach of the legislation, specifically the first principle which requires all processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. It would not be fair to disclose this personal information when the individuals have no expectation it would be disclosed and TfL has not satisfied one of the conditions which would make the processing ‘fair’.
iii) Details of any incidents on escalators for the same period.
We assume that you are referring to incidents at London Bridge Underground Station and have attached a list of ‘shoe entrapment’ incidents at this location during the requested period of October 2018 to April 2019. However, if you would like details covering the London Underground network, please let us know.
 
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 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
 
 
Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London

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