Last summer’s District Line meltdown left tens of thousands of Wimbledon passengers stranded, delayed, and furious. Nearly a year later, the companies responsible are still refusing to say what went wrong. The Championships begin again in less than a month.
During the first week of last year’s Championships, reliability on the Wimbledon branch collapsed to 69%, the worst in over a decade. A quarter of all trains failed to run on the first two days alone. The Mayor of London issued a public apology for what he called a “horrendous experience” that risked damaging the city’s international reputation.
Transport for London holds the data showing exactly what happened, hour by hour, on the branch during those two weeks. It has confirmed it holds that data. It will not release it. Its internal review panel, writing on 1 June 2026, confirmed the dataset is “not yet finalised” and that publication will come “in the coming months.”
The Championships begin on 29 June.
Putney.news has spent three months pushing TfL to release the data and has now filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (IC-521418-M5P3), asking for a Decision Notice before the Championships begin.
‘Your personal interest’
TfL’s refusal comes with a verdict attached. The panel ruled there was “no wider public interest” in releasing the data before planned publication, because doing so “would have served no greater public purpose.” Asking for information about a transport crisis that prompted a mayoral apology was, in TfL’s view, a personal interest rather than a public one.
The Mayor of London apologised for the disruption. Two MPs have written formal letters to TfL and Network Rail. The London Assembly had put a question to TfL on the record. The Evening Standard had called the service “not fit for purpose.”
But TfL has decided that any interest in finding out what went wrong and if things have been fixed is not something of wider concern.
Three months, three refusals
In February 2026, we filed a Freedom of Information request for District Line reliability data covering the summer 2025 crisis. TfL refused in March. The reason: the data was coming “in the summer.”
We challenged that refusal. TfL’s own internal review panel ruled that TfL had not actually answered the request. Eight months after the crisis, TfL had pointed at older published data and said new data would arrive eventually. The panel agreed that was not good enough. Putney.news was invited to try again.
A second request was filed in April, precisely scoped to the crisis period. TfL refused again in May, this time citing Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act, the exemption for information an authority plans to publish. The reason: the data would be published “in the summer.”
We challenged that too. The panel’s answer, on 1 June 2026: the dataset is not yet finalised, agreement with “all relevant parties” is still in progress, and publication will come “in the coming months.” February to June. Three requests. Three refusals.
TfL is not struggling to compile this data. It has it. What it has not done, through four months of requests and challenges, is given any answer that would allow passengers to know whether the branch is in better shape for this year’s Championships than last year’s. Every refusal, every vague formula, every “in the summer” has had the same effect: nothing on the record, nothing to compare, no accountability before the trains start running again. The Championships are 28 days away. The strategy has worked.
Readers are asking too
Putney.news is not alone. A reader let us know this week that they had filed their own FOI request back In October 2025, not to TfL but to Network Rail, the company that owns and maintains the signalling infrastructure on the Wimbledon branch. They asked for a breakdown of every signal failure repair since January 2025, how long each repair held before the next fault developed, and when Network Rail last made significant investment in the line. Basic questions about a public service that had just failed spectacularly.
Network Rail refused. Releasing information about its maintenance work would be “commercially damaging,” it said, because its relationship with TfL “is a commercial matter.”
Network Rail is a public body. TfL is a public body. The signalling failures that stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers are, apparently, a private commercial matter between them. Network Rail’s letter did offer one avenue. TfL, it suggested, “would be likely to supply information of this type” if asked directly. The reader asked TfL. They got the same answer we did.
What they don’t want you to know
East Putney recorded more signal failure hours than any other station on the entire Underground network in 2024: 147 hours, more than double the next worst. Documents from a private meeting between TfL, Network Rail, and Wimbledon MP Paul Kohler produced a frank admission: modern automatic signalling on the branch is “not feasible within any reasonable planning horizon.” The Wimbledon branch will stay on 1980s infrastructure indefinitely.
The same meeting records Kohler asking that communications about a limited monitoring upgrade “should not mention the tennis.” Network Rail clarified that he was not trying to conceal the work, but did not want it portrayed as being done solely for the Championships rather than for year-round passengers. It is a reasonable distinction. It also tells you everything about how carefully everyone involved is managing what the public gets to know about this line.
The withheld data would show what service status on the branch looked like, day by day, during the summer Sadiq Khan apologised for: whether the disruption was concentrated at specific points, or ran through the whole fortnight. TfL knows what it shows. It has decided you will find out when it is ready to tell you.
What happens next
A Decision Notice from the ICO before 29 June is possible but not probable.
TfL’s “coming months” commits to nothing. The data could arrive in July, after the Championships have finished, or later still. By then the disruption it documents will be over a year old, and the question of whether 2026 was better or worse will have answered itself from lived experience on the platform, not from anything TfL chose to release in time to matter.
What you can do
If you use the Wimbledon branch, your MPs are on record on this issue.
Fleur Anderson MP (Putney, Roehampton, Southfields and Wandsworth Town) has described the service as not fit for purpose and has written to both TfL and Network Rail: fleur.anderson.mp@parliament.uk
Paul Kohler MP (Wimbledon) has engaged directly with TfL on signalling improvements: paul.kohler.mp@parliament.uk
You can leave feedback directly with TfL.
