Follow up to 2829-1920: I am now making an FOI request to find out when the lift to the westbound platform at Gospel Oak went out of service. I also want to know when it is expected to be back in service. I would also like to have a record of when the status was displayed on the TfL website and when it was not at this url: https://tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/#stations-status I also would like to know when information about Gospel Oak’s lift status was added to or removed from the TfL live data feed which supplies updownlondon.com between the time the lift went out of service and now. I would also like to know if the information about the lift being out of service was somehow recorded in the Journey Planner system. The Equality Act statutory Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations has the following to say, based upon precedent in the Court of Appeal [Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc v Allen [2009] EWCA Civ 1213 (20 November 2009)]: 7.4 The policy of the Act is not a minimalist policy of simply ensuring that some access is available to disabled people; it is, so far as is reasonably practicable, to approximate the access enjoyed by disabled people to that enjoyed by the rest of the public. The purpose of the duty to make reasonable adjustments is to provide access to a service as close as it is reasonably possible to get to the standard normally offered to the public at large. The incomplete and inaccurate status information supplied creates a disparity between what disabled and non-disabled customers face. If the stairs were out of service, how many customers would know about that in advance? I am guessing there would be announcements and signs and staff would inform people. Why did this not happen for me and other people who require the lift?

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TfL Ref: FOI-3152-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 8 January 2020 asking for information about the lift as Gospel Oak station. You will receive a separate response shortly in respect of the legal claim.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold the information you require.

The westbound Gospel Oak lift was originally taken out of service on 4 July 2019 due to a passenger incident. As a result the doors of the lift were damaged and required bespoke doors to be fitted before it was brought back into service. The lifts on the London Overground network are owned and managed by Network Rail.

The original fault was reported on a daily basis, which automatically generated a message which would appear on our website. The source for this is the London Underground Control Centre (LUCC) ESUI system which also powers on-system electronic information boards.

At some point, the report changed to say the lift was subject to planned maintenance – however we can find no communication as to when this happened, or an intended end date. Archives show that messages related to the loss of westbound step-free access continued to be received until the close of service in the early morning of 17 December, when they stopped. Hence it was assumed that the lift had been brought back into service, and consequently no message appeared on the website on the morning of the 18 December. Either the London Underground Control Centre (LUCC) were incorrectly advised that the lift was back in service or no message had been added, however we have been unable to find any records to explain why these messages stopped at this time. We subsequently failed to publish a message for the period 17-21 December inclusive as we erroneously believed the lift had returned to service.

The message reporting the lift as out of service was re-added to the system at 16.18 on 21 December and we removed it on 28 December when London Overground control confirmed that the lift was in customer service.

At the times where no message is logged on the LUCC’s system, there would have been no message on the TfL website as the data feeds the website and third-party data feeds and Journey Planner automatically.

If this is not the information you are looking for please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard

FOI Case Officer

Information Governance

Transport For London

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