Transport officials say police failed to warn them of concerns about vehicle terror attack

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Barriers and other equipment to protect pedestrians could have been installed on London Bridge if police had told transport authorities it was vulnerable to a terrorist attack, an inquest has heard.

The security measures could have been put in place within weeks of the Westminster Bridge attack on 22 March 2017, Transport for London’s director of compliance, policing and on-street services, Siwan Hayward, told the Old Bailey on Friday. The lack of input from counter-terrorism police meant no action was taken before the London Bridge attack on 3 June 2017.

Hayward previously told the inquiry that police had not told TfL of their concerns that London Bridge could be vulnerable to vehicle attacks by terrorists.

When asked if the transport body would have taken action if police had flagged up the threat, Hayward said: “Absolutely, categorically yes”,adding that TfL would have called a meeting with its partners to consider what urgent action should be taken.

“If a counter-terrorism security adviser [CTSA] had said to us that London Bridge was the most vulnerable site in the capital we would, in collaboration with the Corporation of London, have moved quickly to take action to mitigate the elements that make that site vulnerable to terrorists,” she said.

Although permanent security measures would have taken years to install, Hayward said barriers could have been put in place more quickly.

“We have access to a huge range of vehicle restraint barriers, crash barriers, street furniture, planters, so we would have been able to work on the advice of the CTSA about measures that would have been put in place to reduce the vulnerability of that location,” she said.

Hayward said TfL still did not have the information it needed to prioritise vulnerable areas. “There are still not recommendations coming to us saying: these are the places we need to protect.”

She insisted TfL was “proactively considering protective security measures in every single project that we have in the pipeline”.

But she said: “Determining which of those crowded spaces should be protected and which remain unprotected is a decision that should be made at a national level in consultation and collaboration with all highways authorities.

“To the best of my knowledge, that determination of the protection of crowded spaces has not yet been made.”

Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, killed eight people and injured 48 others in the attack.

Christine Archibald, 30, from Canada, and Xavier Thomas, 45, from France were killed in the van attack on London Bridge. Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sébastien Bélanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, and Ignacio Echeverría, 39, were stabbed to death minutes later.

The inquest continues.