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Two of London’s busiest Tube stations were forced to close after staff burnt toast in their mess rooms, causing safety alerts.

In separate incidents, Victoria and Oxford Circus were shut and evacuated after the smoking toast in staff areas set off fire alarms.

Burnt toast also forced Wood Lane on the Hammersmith & City line to close.

Edgware Road station had to shut because a member of staff puffed on an e-cigarette, filling the mess room full of smoke, also setting off the alarms.

The official report for the Victoria incident states: “burnt toast in mess room had activated fire alarm” while at Oxford Circus; “Smoke in station ops (operations) room due to burnt food in toaster in mess room.”

A security alert was sparked at Sloane Square station but the “suspicious device” turned out to be a home-brewing kit left on a Circle line train by a passenger.

The incidents are among reasons for 1,000 station closures over the last three years uncovered today by City Hall Tories furious at the number of station shutdowns affecting thousands of passengers.

They cover stations in Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham.

There were more than 222 days, or 5,300 hours, of non-emergency closures at Tube stations in the areas covered between February 2014 and February 2017.

The figures do not include safety and security alerts.

The majority of closures, 334 or 41 per cent, were caused by industrial action. Staff shortages were the second biggest issue with 220 closures making up 27 per cent of the total.

Defective lifts at Edgware Road, Regent’s Park, Queensway, Covent garden and Lancaster Gate caused 49 closures with 390 people stuck in lifts for various lengths of time.

Tony Devenish, Tory London Assembly member for West Central who obtained the data through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, said: “Safety and security on London’s Tube network is of the utmost importance and so it is right that staff take seriously all incidents where alarms are triggered or suspicious items are found.

“One of the biggest complaints I hear from my residents is unexpected closures of their local Tube stations and with almost 800 non-emergency closures in three years it’s easy to see why.

“Sadiq Khan’s policies are unlikely to tackle the stations three leading reasons for closures – industrial action, non-availability of staff and defective lifts.

“He is already on course to have the worst strikes record of any London Mayor and his £640 million partial fares freeze could impact on infrastructures such as lift upgrades.”

The warning came as Tube passengers today faced the threat of more strike action.

The result of an RMT ballot among staff at London Bridge and Waterloo stations in protest over the sacking of a ticket barrier employee engaged in a fracas with an alleged fare dodger is due later today with unions leaders expecting it to endorse the strike call.

Mick Cash, the RMT leader, described the sacking as an “appalling miscarriage of justice.”

During the incident a pregnant member of staff is said to have been pushed in the stomach and the employee sacked had his glasses broken and was punched twice, said the union.

A spokesman for the Mayor said: “These claims are absolute nonsense. Of the five instances of industrial action in these figures, four took place while Boris Johnson was Mayor and before Sadiq was elected.

“The overall number of days lost to strike action has actually fallen by 40 per cent since Sadiq became Mayor.

“He also ordered a review into the previous mayor’s approach to staffing stations, and as a result TfL is introducing at least 650 new station staff members to the Underground this year.”



Last week the Evening Standard revealed how lack of trained Tube staff led to a 450 per cent increase in lifts out of action last year; 324 instances totalling 990 hours 57 minutes.