In Baker Street in London sits Transport for London’s lost property depot, a vast filtering system collecting the items left behind as people flow through the city’s transport system each day.

The biggest lost property office in Europe, it is beaten globally only by Tokyo’s depot. Sixty-five staff sort through hundreds of thousands of lost and forgotten items each at the depot, which is run by Paul Cowan.

According to the latest transparency data published this week, and for the first time in such granular detail, Cowan’s team sorted through 332,077 items in the year to March.

This included:

1,200 new items arriving daily

13,000 keys

34,322 mobile phones

46,318 bags

10,000 umbrellas

“If we wanted to charge an accurate price for what it costs us to return each item, it’d be £100,” says Cowan, illustrating the cost of loss.



The data reveals a startling array of items passing through the transport system, handed in from hundreds of stations, not to mention myriad bus depots and umpteen cabs.



And, as the data reveals, very few are claimed. For example, of the nearly 13,000 keys handed in to lost property last year, just under 1,400 – a “tiny fraction” – were returned to their owners, says Cowan. Overall, 20% of stock is claimed within three months; after that time, stock passes into TfL’s possession – and it’s not necessarily the items you’d expect.

A wander through the three basement floors that make up the lost property office gives a revealing insight into what we value enough to recover – and what we’re content to let go.

Most people don’t bother to look when they lose their keys. They change the locks instead Paul Cowan

“As a society, we haven’t become risk-averse so much as risk-aware,” Cowan explains. “Most people don’t bother to even look when they lose their keys. They assume they’ve been compromised and change the locks instead.”

Cowan has developed an interesting insight into the human psyche, particularly into the complexity of lost shoes. “If you have one shoe, you’re more likely to go looking for the other. If you lose two shoes, well, it’s slightly ‘out of sight, out of mind’,” he says.

Cowan, an energetic and outgoing New Zealander, came to the lost property office after his own experience of loss, when he left a laptop on the back of a trolley at an airport. “Just turned around for a minute then had that horrible moment of realisation,” he says.



Cowan was beside himself when staff called him to say they had located it. “That empathy, I guess, drew me towards the role. I used to run the 24-hour call centre for TfL, but when this position came up, I pretty much barged everyone else out of the way.”



Cowan’s hunch is that many people approach loss as an opportunity to treat themselves to something new. “Exhibit A,” he says, gesturing to a 40-inch TV, stashed away next to a size 13 pair of Nike hi-tops.

There’s a lifesize gorilla, handed in a couple of years ago, which was adopted by the crew and named Eddie. In May, he was repurposed to star in the advertising campaign for the Night Tube.

In the mobile phone section, hundreds are bagged in yellow or red envelopes, to denote those found in a taxi. Last year, 42.4% of the 34,322 lost mobile phones were reclaimed – the second-biggest share, behind “valuables” (44.8% of 34,729) and ahead of bags (40.7% of 46,318).



Just over 2% of the 10,000 umbrellas that were handed in last year were returned to their owners

Lost mobile phones collected in envelopes at TfL’s lost property office



Umbrellas are the least likely items to be claimed. Set out in rows of handles – wooden, cane, plastic, other – just over 2% of the 10,000 umbrellas that were handed in last year were returned to their owners. Cowan says they’re so cheap that no one bothers to reclaim them.



“There’s a karma thing going on,” says Cowan, noting that even 10,000 is a minuscule number when put in the context of London’s population. “If people find an umbrella on the tube, they just reuse it.”

Last summer, on a couple of days of monsoon-like rain, Cowan did his bit for karma when he went up to Baker Street and handed out armfuls of them to people coming out of the tube.

Eddie the gorilla, who was adopted by the TfL lost property crew, and Paul Cowan



The lost items are kept in order through an impenetrable process of catalogues, serial numbers and pink laminate sheets strung from the ceiling reading words such as “Misc 20”.

“The systems themselves are very old, quite complicated, but it seems to work for us,” says Cowan. “I tell the guys as long as they can find it in under 30 seconds, I don’t mind how they do it.”

On the first basement level, the 30 bags of unsorted property that slid down the chute that morning have finally been tagged, bagged and logged on to the Sherlock computer system. Each item stops off at a number of sub depots on its way to Baker Street, meaning it can easily take a week before it is processed.

At the far end of the bottom level each item is sorted through and stripped down to its basic components. As per the Transport Act of 1982, any item still unclaimed after three months becomes the property of TfL, to dispose of as they see fit.

Data must be destroyed “because as property owners, we have to take the Data Protection Act seriously”, says Cowan. Papers are shredded. USB sticks compacted. Some items – power tools, musical instruments – are sold at auction, defraying the cost of the depot itself.



But much of it goes to charity. Clothes are immediately sent to one of the three main organisations TfL supports, while other bits and bobs, such as cosmetics, are cobbled together into care packages for charities. Toys go to disadvantaged children during the annual Christmas run.

Back at the customer service desk, far above the belly of the beast where items are ingested and digested, a couple of wallets are being reunited with their owners – both with cash still inside.

One belongs to a 10-year-old boy who’d left his on a bus. He grins with sheepish delight as he inspects it with his mum – he’s got his £20 back.

The other has been claimed by a man who lost it while on his way to see The Mousetrap with his family. It still contained £120, less the £20 finder’s fee for the cabbie. He also lost something in Tokyo once, “and there, the police made me telephone the person who handed in my item, to thank them”, he says.

In London, one of the key hazards are doughnuts – one of the favoured gifts relieved customers buy for the lost property staff. Every item is just a statistic, but for the people who reclaim theirs, each data point is profoundly intimate – from missing medication to lost wedding rings.

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As a loss-making part of TfL, Cowan’s depot work is at the social-mission end of public service. “Dealing with the city’s transport can be very impersonal,” Cowan considers. “We want to be the bit that puts the human element back.”

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