20,000 people stopped for not wearing face masks on Tubes or buses

More than 20,000 Londoners have been stopped by police or transport inspectors for not wearing face masks on the Tube or buses.

Mayor Sadiq Khan today revealed there had been 20,618 “interactions” with passengers, mostly on buses, to enforce the compulsory requirement to wear a face covering on public transport.

He told Mayor’s Question Time that, as of yesterday, 61 fixed penalty notices had been issued by British Transport Police or TfL officials.

It has been mandatory to wear face coverings on public transport since June 15, with people who fail to comply at risk of being prevented from travelling and being issued with a £100 fine.

Children under 11 and people with medical conditions or a disability, or those who would suffer “severe distress” wearing a mask, are exempt.

Mr Khan said enforcement teams had “three tools” at their disposal to enforce the rules.

They could stop someone without a mask from getting on public transport, ask people without a mast to leave the transport network or issue a fine.

He said most interactions were resolved amicably.

TfL surveys have found that about 90 per cent of passengers have been wearing a face covering. Of the 10 per cent without a mask, half claimed this was for medical reasons.

The Mayor said compliance with the rules was higher on the Tube.

TfL has been able to restore services to almost 100 per cent of pre-lockdown levels but social distancing requirements mean fewer passengers can be carried on buses and that the 2m or “1m-plus” distancing cannot be maintained – hence the need for masks.

He said TfL had installed 1,000 hand sanitiser points across the capital’s transport network and had introduced a one-way system in stations to aid social distancing.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in