Transport for London's (TfL's) Lost Property Office is moving to a new location, which TfL claims will enable lost belongings to be returned faster to their owners.
The Lost Property Office, which processes more than two hundred thousand items left on London Transport vehicles and premises each year, is relocating from its temporary home at Pelham Street in South Kensington to a new location next to West Ham Bus Garage.
The move to the new site has been designed to accommodate the growing scale of TfL's Lost Property Office. It will help speed up the processing and recording of lost items, which will enable passengers to be reunited with their belongings more quickly. The location also provides easier parking for Black Taxi drivers delivering lost property.
The Office's contact hours will remain as Monday – Friday 08:30-16:00 (excluding Bank Holidays). As the relocation is taking place, lost property claimants will be told the exact location and collection hours of the Lost Property Office once their claim has been verified.
The Lost Property Office celebrates its ninetieth anniversary later this month. It was set up in 1933 when the plethora of private companies operating various modes of public transport within London were brought into public ownership in the new London Transport (LT).
The creation of a single, coherent organisation made it possible to also create a centralised Lost Property Office, and this was done on 30 October 1933, based at 200 Baker Street.
Over the next ninety years, the Lost Property Office became the largest of its kind in Europe, recovering items from services including black cabs, the Tube, DLR, buses and more recently the Elizabeth line.
As London's transport network has grown, so has the volume of lost property. In 2019 the office was temporarily relocated to Pelham Street in South Kensington while a more suitable permanent location was identified. The Lost Property Office has now moved to West Ham on a permanent basis.
The items lost on the transport network over the last nine decades have changed along with social changes and developments. At first, the most common items were umbrellas and bowler hats filled shelves, but today's lost property now includes mobile phones, e-cigarettes and designer handbags can be found.
Between 2020 and 2021, TfL returned more than 4,400 wallets and 3,500 bags to their owners, and reunited more than 1,300 phones with their owners during the last financial year.
As well as the staff working at the Office, many more transport workers are involved in recovering items of lost property. They may be found by bus or train drivers, cleaners or others, and processed by station staff who log their details and prepare them for collection. Many items do not even need to go to the Lost Property Office, as quick-thinking staff are able to locate the owners, for example by making an announcement or contacting other stations.
Every year, hundreds of stories emerge of how staff at the Lost Property Office reunited passengers with treasured possessions lost on the transport network. Recently, a young girl's family contacted the Office when she lost her teddy bear while travelling on the Jubilee line. Staff found the toy using the photograph and description supplied by the girl, and also identified that it had been located at St John's Wood. Reunited with her teddy, the girl told staff that she could sleep well at night now that her teddy bear was back with her.
TfL advises people to begin their search for lost property by asking at the original location where the item was lost. If that is not successful, their next step is item is to complete an enquiry form on the TfL website.
Items are securely held by the Lost Property Office for three months, while staff attempt to identify the owners by using information contained in the property, or by matching items to descriptions provided by passengers.
After this time, any unclaimed items have personal data removed (and securely destroyed), and are donated to charity, recycled or auctioned. Any revenue generated from unclaimed items contributes towards the cost of running the Lost Property Office.
More information about claiming lost property can be found here.
More information on the history of the Lost Property Offucd can be found here.
Diana Quaye, Performance Manager of TfL's Lost Property Office, said: “We are delighted to be commemorating the 90th anniversary of the famed Lost Property Office, which provides such an important service for customers who have misplaced their belongings while using London's transport network. The smile on customers' faces when they are reunited with something they thought was gone forever will never get old, and I am constantly reminded of how honest Londoners are when they hand in items they find.
“Following three years of reuniting customers with their items at our South Kensington office, we are pleased to have moved to a new home – a building that can accommodate the complexities of operating the largest lost property office in Europe and this ensure we can reunite owners with their lost belongings as quickly as possible. As the capital recovers from the pandemic, we've seen a rise in customers using our network, meaning that we have also seen a return in the volume of lost property that comes to us. So now, more than ever, it is paramount that we move to a facility that enables us to sort and return lost items to our customers in the best way possible. Rather than give up hope and think your property is gone forever, I always advise people to report their lost items on our website because you never know, we just may have it!”
