The controversy is likely to intensify next week when Liebreich gives evidence to a London assembly committee that is investigating bus and tram safety. Liebreich, a Conservative financier who was appointed to the TfL board by Boris Johnson in 2012 — and once considered running for the mayoralty himself — is expected to criticise TfL’s handling of the fatigue audit and its safety record generally.

The fatigue audit was conducted in the aftermath of one of the worst light rail disasters in recent British history.

At just after 6am on the morning of November 9, 2016, a tram overturned on a sharp curve near the Sandilands stop, in south London, having entered the curve at more than three times the speed limit for that bend. Investigators believe the driver may have momentarily fallen asleep and was so confused when he woke up that he forgot to brake in time.

In May 2017, as investigators examined the Croydon crash, there was another disturbing incident on the tram network.

On a Wednesday morning in rush hour, a driver fell asleep at the controls. Alarmed commuters sent video footage of the sleeping driver to a newspaper, sparking fresh calls for an inquiry into whether drivers were being pushed too hard. The mayor demanded urgent answers.

TfL sent an auditor into TOL to examine its fatigue management systems on June 13, 2017, according to the documents seen by BuzzFeed News.



The draft report he circulated to TfL executives several weeks later stated clearly on its front page: “Audit Conclusion: Requires Improvement”.

In the executive summary, the auditor identified three “Priority 1 Issues” that TOL needed to address: TOL’s management of drivers’ working hours and the roster design didn’t “consider fatigue risk factors or reference industry good practice”; managers and supervisors weren’t trained about “factors that increase fatigue or how to recognise fatigue in others”; and the company had no formal process to determine when a fatigue risk analysis should be carried out or reviewed.

Six other issues were listed as “Priority 2”, including that TOL wasn’t formally documenting procedures for managing fatigue or using the data it collected to update its system.

The executive summary concluded: “On the basis of the work completed we have concluded that Fatigue Management in TOL Requires Improvement.”

According to emails, TfL and TOL met to discuss the report on July 26, 2017.

Two days later, a TOL executive emailed a summary of their discussions:

“Thank you for meeting with us on Wednesday to discuss feedback on your Fatigue Management Audit,” the TOL manager wrote. “Thank you also for confirming you will be reviewing both the detail and the conclusions reached in your draft report.”

Listing TOL's objections to the audit, he said: “At the end of the audit, TOL was given verbally a provisional conclusion of ‘Generally Well Controlled’. This conclusion was then changed to ‘Requires Improvement’ in the draft report without any further discussion or indication either ahead of the release of the draft or at the meeting as to why the conclusion had changed.”

The executive also complained that the audit had measured TOL's fatigue management performance against standards set by the Office of Rail and Road, the industry regulator, rather than against its own safety practices; and that TfL’s auditor had “appeared not to recognise many areas in which TOL’s systems reflect good practice because they had not been written up as formal procedures”.