Tube bodies 'stored in cupboards'

Commuters wait for a train. Photo: Getty Images

A new documentary on London's Underground has revealed the bodies of people who commit suicide are sometimes kept in cleaning cupboards and store rooms.

London Underground says the The Channel 4 documentary, Confessions From The Underground, is innacurate but staff who spoke to the producers say that storing the bodies in such a way is done to ensure the network keeps moving.

Britain's Daily Mail newspaper reported that a male member of the Tube’s Emergency Response Unit said: "As far as I understand it, London Ambulance services have limited resources and a few years back they stopped taking anybody who’s deceased into their ambulances back to hospitals.

"Sometimes there’s a delay, it might be half an hour, maybe even two hours and then we’re left with a body on the platform and disturbingly for us we have to find a place to put a body.

"Unfortunately, we had to use, at Stratford, a bin store outside in the car park, you know the big, massive, industrial bins. Putting someone’s body in there, not in the bin, in with the bins, it’s not really respectful."

London Underground said producers did not interview its chief executive.

London Underground's Managing Director Mike Brown told The Daily Mail: "Our staff work hard, every day, to keep London moving and to upgrade the Tube for the future. London Underground staff will simply not recognise the inaccurate picture painted by this film, the result of the highly selective and partisan approach taken by the producers."