Thouand of items including Royal Wedding invite left behind on public transport
A total of 5,282 items of lost property were left behind on public transport in Ealing last year (2010/11).
The most common items left on public transport in the borough were books, bags and items of clothing .
Throughout London more than 207,000 items were handed in to Transport for London’s (TfL) Lost Property Office (LPO) in the last year – including 41,000 books, 31,000 bags and 28,000 items of clothing. The Lost Property Office, one of the busiest in the UK, handles items that are left behind on the TfL network, including buses, London Underground, London Overground, DLR, Licensed taxis or in Victoria Coach Station.
The variety of property handed in is vast and includes sports gear, folders of school work, toys, power tools, pushchairs, suitcases, walking sticks and even crutches.
One of the more interesting items handed in recently was a handbag containing an invitation to the Royal wedding. On average one in three items is reunited with its owner.
Transport for London’s Lost Property Office Manager, Paul Cowan, said:
“Last year people left more than 5,200 items behind on public transport in Ealing. We would enc
ourage all passengers to check and make sure they take all their belongings with them. However, anyone who does lose something on public transport in London should get in touch with us at the Lost Property Office. People are generally honest and those treasured items that passengers thought they may have lost forever may actually be in our office just waiting to be picked up.
“We do our best to reunite people with their property, through a combination of our own detective work, using Sherlock – our computer system and, of course, through passengers contacting us to claim items. Although we store property for three months, sadly a large number of items remain unclaimed after that period. In these instances items are donated to charity, sold at auction or recycled.”
The top 5 items left behind on public transport in Ealing were:
Books 1,220
Bags 910
Clothing 654
Telephones 589
*Valuables 588
* Valuables include wallets, cash, laptops, cameras, etc.
28 June 2011