The TfL fat cats earning more than the Prime Minister

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to the Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, why this year's Wimbledon Tennis Championship is off to a record-breaking start. So it broke the record dating back to the beginning of the Open Era, which is back to 1968. An absolutely brilliant day for British tennis.

0:36But first, how much do you spend every month using Transport for London to get around the city? Whether it's the London Underground, Overground, DLR, Elizabeth Line or Bus Network, it's likely that you'll have noticed an increase in travel fares. But that's not the only thing that has been rising. According to the Standard's City Hall and Transport editor Ross Lydell, the number of TfL staff earning six figures or more is on the up. And his exclusive report found that 78 employees earned£170 ,000 or more, which is above the reported£167 ,000 salary of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. It comes as tube fares increased by an average of 4.6 % in March.

1:28And the government told London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan to continue to increase fares above inflation each year until the end of the decade. Ross joins me now. Can you just talk through some of these shocking figures? So more than 2 ,200 TfL staff earned in excess of£100 ,000 in the most recent financial year, 2024-2025. That is about 900 more than the previous year. And of these, 78 people earned £170 ,000 or more, which is more than the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starne. And who are the top earners? Well, the top earner is the TfL commissioner, Andy Lord. So there's no obvious surprise there because he's the main man in the whole organisation.

2:19He took home a total of£639 ,000 last year, and that's included a bonus of£187 ,000. So the issue here is essentially the scale of the sort of bonus culture at TfL. It's often been criticised in the past. And again, it's been criticised just because of the sheer number of people who are taking home these six-figure salaries. By all means, pay the market rate. And TfL does say in Andy Lord's own circumstances that if he was working in the private sector, he's of a sort of certain status that he could expect to earn about£2 million a year. The number of people earning this money is what has caught the eye.

3:00Are these salaries justified given the service that TfL provides? The salaries aren't measured against fares. One thing that most passengers will bear in mind is how much it costs to use the tube or the buses. Fares did go up, I think, about 4.6 % in March, although bus fares were frozen again. But the cost of using the tube or the Elizabeth Line or the overground does keep going up. It's not cheap, to be frank. Every time I look, my Oyster card has taken another£20. Fairpeels expect value for money, and there are a list of criteria against which the finance team, if you like, called the Finance Committee within the TfL board measure the performance of the chief officers.

3:44So there's a sort of scorecard and bonuses are only paid if a certain number of key measures are achieved. It's fair to say that it is sort of authenticated in that way. But nevertheless, over the year that we're just talking about, there have been a number of issues with TFL services, not least the fact that this new fleet of Piccadilly Line trains that is due to come in in December this year now won't come in until probably a year later. It's now scheduled for the second half of next year. Similarly, the new fleet of DLR trains is delayed. There have been all kinds of issues. TfL did open the Silvertown Tunnel on time, so that's one sort of tick in the well-done box.

4:27It's not correct to say that TfL's performance over the past year has been flawless and would necessarily merit payouts of this scale. And what has the reaction been to this? So Keith Prince, who is the Tory transport spokesman at the London Assembly, he points to the fact that many tube trains are currently covered in graffiti. This is a particular problem on the Central Line and the Bakerloo Line. And he says that's just one example of why these payouts indicate a degree of TFL and Sadiq being tone deaf to the realities of travelling on the London transport network. Mahina Bokhari, the leader of the Lib Dem group at City Hall, she said this is a really bad look and it does bring into question whether fair payers are getting value for money.

5:13The other person worth mentioning is Sarah Delagarde, who is currently bringing a£25 million compensation claim against TFL after suffering horrendous injuries when she fell underneath a tube train. Her case began in the High Court last week and she has pointed to eye-watering salaries and the bonus culture at TFL that really has to be called into question at a time when she says the TFL network is not safe. What has TFL said in response? TfL says it's a massive organisation. It's got a£9 billion annual budget. It has 28 ,000 staff. These sort of salaries are justified. It also says that the£100 ,000 threshold that we're talking about here is no longer relevant in the modern day.

6:00It says that£100 ,000 threshold is something we've been talking about for the last seven or eight years. And if that had gone up itself by the rate of inflation, a more accurate measure or a sort of fairer measure for executive pay would be to say, cruise over£150 ,000, not£100 ,000. And therefore, if you looked at the figures for£150 ,000 or more, you'd have far, far fewer than the 2 ,200 people who earn over£100 ,000. The other thing they're seeing as well, in fairness to TfL, is about three quarters of the people who did earn six-figure salaries did so not because of a basic pay rate in excess of£100 ,000, but because they were either working overtime or received bonuses that took them above this threshold.

6:44So either it's for extra work or good work. It's not their basic rate. Finally, you're just about to publish a follow-up story. Tell me more about that. The other thing that the TFL accounts revealed, and you can sort of tell that I've obviously been looking at these accounts year on year for quite some time, is what's called facility time. And this essentially is how many TFL staff are paid to work for the trade unions that they represent. Now, there are seven trade unions that look after different staff within TFL from the RMT and ASLEF that represent tube drivers or tube staff to others such as the TSSA and Unite.

7:24Now, many of those union reps are actually TFL employees rather than union employees, and they get given time off to do the work of the union to essentially ensure a sort of harmonious regime so that managers and staff aren't falling out all the time and there aren't strikes all the time. What we can reveal on the standard is that 843 union staff are being paid by TfL to carry out union duties. But the total cost of this to TfL is£9.2 million a year, which again is quite a substantial amount of money and is actually up more than a million pounds on the previous year. So again, this is something that might catch the eye and cause some concern amongst those of us who actually pay their way when they're using the tube or the bus network.

8:11Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, how this year's British hopefuls are faring at Wimbledon. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

8:30Welcome back. This year's Wimbledon tennis tournament opened yesterday with a large British cohort, hoping to make their mark. Brits such as Emma Raducanu, Katie Bolter and qualifier Oliver Tarvert were all victorious and in total seven Britons in the men's and women's draw progressed to the second round on day one. This makes it the most successful day for British players at Wimbledon in the Open era. Joining us now is The Standards sports writer Dom Smith, who has been reporting from the tennis championship. Dom, how was the opening day of Wimbledon? It was a record-breaking day for British tennis, actually.

9:16It's the most wins that any singles have produced on a single day of Wimbledon in terms of British players. Seven British players won yesterday, which was amazing, not only for the start of the tournament, but also never have there been more single winners for Britain in a single day than that. There were some players who were expected to win, like, for example, Cameron Norrie, who was playing Roberto Batista-Agu, and also Emma Raducanu, who was playing another Brit, 17-year-old Mimi Zhu, who was the wild card. So Emma Raducanu, very much the more experienced player and expected to win. But, you know, not only was it this record-breaking day, but so many of them were shock wins for British players.

9:52I was watching out on one of the open courts, Oliver Tarvert from St. Albans. He's 21 and he's ranked 733rd in the world. Considering only 128 men take place in the singles, to be ranked 733rd and make it into Wimbledon was extraordinary. He made it through the qualifiers last week. And then to win against another qualifier was absolutely amazing. He did it in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 against another qualifier, Leandro Reedy. But Reedy was ranked much higher. So amazing for Tarver. And his prize is to play Carlos Alcaraz tomorrow, Wednesday, and we expect it probably to be on centre court.

10:29Tell me more about Emma Raducanu's match and obviously the heat has been intense. Did it affect play? It was also a record-breaking day in terms of the heat as well. It's not the hottest day ever recorded on Wimbledon but it was the hottest day one ever of Wimbledon. 32.3 degrees I believe was the highest temperature recorded. Yeah and it did feel that way and in terms of Raducanu I think she made a really fast start against Mimi Zhu who was on her Wimbledon debut, just 17 years of age on court number one, an amazing opportunity and maybe showed a few nerves. Raducanu showed no nerves. And although Zhu started to come into her own and played better tennis than at the very beginning of the match, it was always Raducanu's match really.

11:10And I think she came very confidently. And she also seems a bit happier in herself. I think she's been engaging in lots of kind of social media content for various accounts, the way she's carrying herself at the moment. She just looks to be in a happier place. And certainly her tennis did the talking yesterday. So who can people look forward to seeing? Lots of exciting players in action for the first time today. Novak Djokovic begins his campaign against Alexander Muller. He's on centre court. I'll be watching that one later. And also, of course, the big British hope, Jack Draper, who plays against Sebastian Byers in a match that he'll very much be expected to win.

11:43Draper's got quite a tough draw, although he's ranked fourth in the world and so would be expected to have quite a kind draw. In the third round, there's a chance that he might play a player from Kazakhstan called Alexander Bublik, who's one of those fiery kind of Nick Kyrgios kind of players who on their day can be any player. And although his ranking is much lower than Draper's, I think that's a really dangerous opponent that he could face. But Draper can't think about that now. He needs to think about his first match. He starts today and some other British players involved today as well, including Heather Watson.

12:17And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow at 4pm. We'll see you then.