Payments made to the MPS for police officers to enforce fare evasion
Request ID: FOI-2552-2223 Date published: 09 February 2023
You asked
Dear Transport for London,
The Met police have informed me explicitly that you pay for police officers to enforce ticket evasion issues.
Please supply the following.
1. How much you have paid the Metropolitain police for this service.
2. How many days of officers were involved.
We answered
TfL Ref: 2552-2223
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11 January 2023 asking for information about payments made to the Metropolitan Police Service. 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 the information you require. You asked: The Met police have informed me explicitly that you pay for police officers to enforce ticket evasion issues.
Please supply the following for financial year 2021/22:
1. How much you have paid the Metropolitan police for this service. 2. How many days of officers were involved.
Metropolitan Police Officers are not paid specifically for this service. TfL and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) jointly fund the Roads and Transport Policing Command and TfL contributed £95.7million towards this in 2022/23. The combined funding enablesover 2,000 officers to work to ensure transport and travelling in London is safer and covers both personnel and operational costs. Please see the following link for more information on transport policing: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/safety-and-security/security-on-the-network/transport-policing
As part of the funding deal with the MPS, police officers provide support for revenue operations on London’s bus network, however, all actual ticket checking and revenue enforcement activity is carried out by TfL Operations Officers with support where necessary from the MPS.
Over the 2021/22 financial year (which ran from 1/4/21 to 31/3/22), 638 police-supported revenue operations were conducted, and during the 2022/23 financial year, to the date of this request, 474 police-supported revenue operations have been conducted thus far.
Please note that operations do not happen every day, but multiple operations can be held on any given day.
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
Sara Thomas FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
