Transport for London denies Station Manager’s asbestos exposure

Thousands of London Underground employees continue to work in proximity to asbestos-containing materials, but may struggle to obtain compensation if they later develop an asbestos disease, Confront has found.

John Smith learned last year that he has an aggressive cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, mesothelioma. His name has been changed to protect his privacy.

John had never worked in a place with a risk of asbestos exposure before joining TfL in the 1990s, according to his legal adviser. He worked as a station supervisor at Barbican and other stations between 2012 and 2020, before retiring in 2023.

After being diagnosed with mesothelioma in early 2025, John instructed law firm RWK Goodman to pursue a claim against TfL. His claim concerned asbestos removal works in Barbican station to remove Asbestos Insulation Board (AIB) from the ceiling of a disused room in 2013.

He thinks he came into contact with asbestos from the removal works as he was shutting down Barbican station in the middle of the night, his legal adviser told Confront. John was required to lock up by going into unventilated areas that were off-limits to the public. This is when, he believes, he was exposed to airborne asbestos from asbestos removal works. TfL did not warn him of any risk of being exposed to asbestos while doing his job, nor was he given any protective equipment.

The law firm asked TfL to admit liability to help John pay for life-sustaining cancer treatment. But in November 2025, TfL denied liability.

TfL typically receives several claims a year from people who have fallen ill with asbestos-related diseases: 146 claims in total from about 2002 until 2024, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. However, some claims could be excluded by the size of the dataset TfL chooses to preserve. TfL has paid out £7,034,813.25, including legal fees, relating to these claims. Not every claim was solely against TfL and not every claim was settled; some have been withdrawn or are still open.

John and his family are reeling from not only the suddenness of the diagnosis, but also his longtime employer’s refusal to compensate him for private medical care. Privately funded medical treatments like targeted immunotherapy may be out of reach. There is no known cure for mesothelioma, and the average person in the UK dies within a year of a diagnosis.

Worrying trend

Asbestos is the leading occupational killer in the UK, with over 5,000 deaths a year. It usually takes decades after exposure before an asbestos disease develops. Michael Wolstencroft, a Partner in the Respiratory Disease Team at law firm RWK Goodman, told Confront that he has seen low-exposure cases become more frequent as the nature of asbestos claims shifts away from historic heavy industries such as shipbuilding and steelworks to workplaces thought to be less dangerous.

Often, employers are denying fault, and recent court rulings have gone against those bringing claims, he says. One reason for this is that evidence of low exposure is challenging to collect, as people don’t go to work expecting to be exposed to asbestos.

“We are increasingly seeing clients who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma after sustaining low levels of asbestos exposure, such as in the London Underground,” said Wolstencroft.

Wolstencroft says employers facing mesothelioma claims in recent months are becoming “emboldened” to reject them thanks to two Court of Appeal decisions.

In 2025, the Court of Appeal dismissed allegations against a car garage, which in the 1980s used an air line to blow asbestos dust from brake shoes and clutch drive plates. The case centred on a woman who worked at the garage and believed she was exposed to asbestos dust, and later died from mesothelioma (Johnstone v Fawcett’s Garages). A Court of Appeal in 2024 also dismissed a mesothelioma claim relating to a man who was exposed to asbestos-containing laboratory Bunsen burner mats while working in a hospital.

The decisions have made low-exposure claims challenging and may lead to employers who would previously have been held liable escaping liability, says Wolstencroft.

Several law firms had predicted the 2025 case could lead to this outcome. UK legal services provider Keoghs’ Partner David Pugh wrote in a memo last year that it could make low-level asbestos exposure mesothelioma claims “more expensive to run and to defend.”

Misinformed attitudes

Many UK workplaces continue to contain significant amounts of asbestos-containing materials. The London Underground is no exception.

Asbestos is in everything from false ceilings in booking offices to soundproofing and caulking in tunnels, says Wolstencroft. According to the FOIA request, there were 21,468 live instances of known asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) in 2024, and asbestos removals continue. This means some London Underground employees will work alongside asbestos-containing materials for the foreseeable future, with a risk of developing a disease like John Smith’s if they are accidentally exposed to toxic asbestos fibres.

Liz Darlison MBE, CEO of the charity Mesothelioma UK, which improves access to care for patients, said: “My heart goes out to this gentleman. I find it unfathomable that people do not acknowledge that, working in the transport industry and Transport for London for many years, he would have been exposed to asbestos, because it’s without question there would have been asbestos in his work environment.”

Darlison called TFL’s stance archaic and misinformed. “We seem to have the 1900s view that you have to have been working with it as a carpenter, joiner, lagger or something,” she says. “That’s absolutely not the case.”

About 60,000 people have died of mesothelioma in the UK since its use was banned in 1999, with more than 94% of those deaths being preventable, says Darlison. Government figures also suggest that a further 60,000 people have died from lung cancer due to asbestos.

“We know from the number of healthcare workers and education workers that it’s these low levels of exposure that are keeping our shameful high incidence of mesothelioma right up there,” says Darlison.

Small amounts of asbestos can cause cancer even in those who have had no asbestos-related employment. Darlison’s charity sees the impact first-hand. “We know the incidence is going up in younger people and we know it’s going up in women. That’s not because they are building with asbestos or lagging with asbestos.” The charity’s national team of nurses monitors mesothelioma patients, including teachers, university workers, doctors, nurses, hairdressers, secretaries, and administrators.

A past mesothelioma claim handled by RWK Goodman Respiratory Disease Partner Helen Childs concerned the death of the wife of a man doing renovations in the London Underground. She was exposed to asbestos while doing her husband’s laundry. Another worker in Waterloo station was allegedly exposed to asbestos while AIB sheets were being removed from walls and ceilings, FOIA requests show.

“Simply put, there’s no safe level of asbestos exposure and we call upon the government to implement stricter legislation and to require publicly owned bodies to remove asbestos from their buildings once and for all to prevent harm to their employees and the public at large,” says Wolstencroft.

A TfL spokesperson told Confront that TfL had strict controls in place, in line with the government’s Control of Asbestos Regulations, as well as teams to monitor and manage locations where asbestos has been found. TfL said it did not comment on cases involving individual staff members. They also said that, “due to the nature of asbestos exposure, the majority of these claims relate to exposure that occurred before the introduction of asbestos licensing regulations”.

We have approached the leading two transport workers’ unions, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), to understand the current risk to workers.

Jared Wood, London Transport Regional Organiser for RMT, said: “We are very concerned that TfL has no process in place to identify staff who may have been exposed to asbestos when a risk is identified.

“TfL relies on self-reporting, which means that unless a member of staff is told they have been working at a site where asbestos is subsequently found there will be no record kept. This is wholly unacceptable.

“TfL has admitted to us that many records of potential asbestos exposure were lost during administrative reorganisations but they are refusing to note this on individual work records. RMT members across maintenance and operational grades work in proximity to asbestos on a daily basis and we will continue to demand that TfL takes a more proactive approach to reducing risk and recording potential exposure.”

National asbestos strategy needed

London Underground asbestos removal works are not yet finished. There were 21,468 live instances of known asbestos-containing materials in 2024, according to TfL. Green Park is the London Underground station with the highest number of asbestos-containing assets, followed by Waterloo, Euston and Canary Wharf, according to data obtained by Confront through an FOI request.

In Barbican Station alone, there were 19 locations containing asbestos, a 2025 Hazardous Materials Asset Register shows.

Darlison suggested that what’s needed is a national policy to deal with asbestos in buildings and its fallout, like Australia’s 2014 Asbestos National Strategic Plan. The policy created an independent agency that oversees asbestos removal, patient care, research, and public awareness.

“It’s a strategy that will be delivered by successive governments, and we need exactly that same approach,” says Darlison. “Wake up and smell the coffee, because the evidence is there right underneath your nose. We don’t need to investigate it further. We just need to do something about it.”

Do you have experience with asbestos in the London Underground on in UK’s transport system? Contact cris@confrontpower.org in confidence.