Andrew Dismore

As you’ll be aware, the Government has announced that London is now under Tier 4 coronavirus restrictions. Anybody who needs to travel should maintain social distancing, wash their hands before and after they travel, and observe the law on wearing a face covering for the duration of the journey, unless exempt. The Government’s message is only travel if you must, stay local and reduce the number of journeys you make. We’ve shared this advice with customers across all our available channels, including social media, direct email and on the network where possible.

We apologise for any disruption caused and would like to reassure customers we are working hard to resolve this issue. We are committed to running a safe and reliable service for those who need to travel for one of the Government’s legally permitted reasons. Our aim is to continue to run a full planned service, but we will continue to monitor staff availability given an increase in staff staying at home in line with government advice. It is possible that staff shortages mean we need to make some adjustments to services at short notice, but we will do all we can to avoid this.

In addition, our Safety Health Environment team will be undertaking a revised health and safety assessment of our Turn Up and Go policy, once Public Health England has issued further guidance. This is in response to Tier 4 coronavirus restrictions and emerging information about the new variant of Covid-19, which the Government advises transmits more easily than the previous variant. Turn Up and Go physical assistance services on London Underground and London Overground have been paused while this process is taking place,  Our staff are still on hand at stations to help customers with any other assistance if required, and they have been advised to ensure any customer needing physical assistance at this time is provided with a fully accessible taxi service to their next accessible destination.

We will be emailing customers who have registered with us for accessibility updates and please also feel free to share this information with your network if you think it is appropriate to do so. We will undertake wider customer communications as required, dependent on the outcome of our Safety Health Environment team’s review as to whether the service should be paused for an extended period in response to the public health situation.