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Step-free access was unavailable at London Underground stations for a combined 306 days last year due to faulty lifts.

Transport for London has apologised after statistics showed 77 per cent of stations with lifts vital to disabled people and parents with pushchairs were at times unable to offer the service in the 12 months to November 2018.

Barking was the worst offending station, with its lifts out of order for 42 days across the year, a freedom of information request showed.

Tottenham Court Road was without step-free access for more than 37 days because of broken lifts, and Wembley Central for over 31 days.

Only 76 out of 270 Underground stations have step-free access and only 57 of those have lifts, with some stations employing ramps instead.

Of stations with lifts, 44 were unable to offer step-free access at various points in the past year as a direct result of lifts not working, including Westminster, King’s Cross and Canary Wharf.

Campaigners said the figures showed that TfL must do more to improve accessibility. Alan Benson, chairman of the group Transport for All, said: “With so few accessible Underground stations, especially in central London, it is vital that the lifts that do exist are working.

“These entirely avoidable outages cause real problems for the many people relying on step-free access.”

Chris Stapleton, 61, a retired IT worker and wheelchair user from south London, said the issue was “a gross insult to disabled people”.

“A lift is not a horrendously complex machine, and there is no excuse for them breaking down as frequently as they do,” he said. “You can never rely on lifts being in service when you need them. I never travel by Tube if I have to arrive somewhere punctually, as an unexpected lift outage might double or treble my journey time, because I would have to resort to buses or taxis.”

Nigel Holness, managing director of London Underground, said: “We understand how challenging it can be for our customers when lifts are temporarily taken out of service and apologise to those who have had their journey disrupted for this reason.

“Our lifts get a routine maintenance check every two weeks, a full MOT every six months and a partial refurbishment every five years. They are fully replaced every 10 to 20 years depending on the type.”

In December 2016, Mayor Sadiq Khan announced he was investing an additional £200 million over five years with the intention of taking the number of step-free Tube stations above 100.