Unfortunately, we will not be able to help you in the following circumstances:

You have copied us in to a complaint that you have written to the transport company.

As you are waiting for a response from the transport company, we will not get involved at this time.

The transport company has not responded.

Please give the transport company 20 working days to respond to you.

The transport company has no record of your contacting them. 

We will pass any details we have of your complaint and request that they contact you directly.

The complaint is about heritage rail services or charter operators. 

Our remit in this area is limited to delays, train cancellations and accessibility.  We will not get involved, for example, with complaints about on board services such as food, beverages or any other aspect of the trip.

Your complaint is about a penalty charge notice (parking – not red route). 

The appeals process will be on the penalty charge form. These are normally managed or contracted out by the local authority.

You have been taken to court and have received a judgement.

Once you have been to court and received a judgement we are unable to assist you. Any appeal must be made through the appropriate legal channels.

You have failed to register your concerns within a reasonable timescale.

We cannot deal with complaints that are not made within a reasonable timescale. This can vary depending on the nature of your complaint. Transport companies may be unable to consider issues if they are not raised in a reasonable time frame. Generally, most complaints are made within six weeks of the issue arising. Refund claims with some operators must be made within 21 days.

You have received a penalty fare and the appeal has failed.

London TravelWatch is not a penalty fare appeals body and therefore cannot overturn a decision made by the appeal company. However, we welcome all complaints and will try to help wherever we can.

Your complaint is about a transport company but not from the point of view of a user of that service

We represent users of public transport in and around the London area. We cannot, for example, help with noise from train stations or residents of an area unhappy with a new bus route.

You have sent us an appeal but the operator or issue falls outside of our remit

If your appeal relates to buses outside of London, we will pass your complaint to Bus Users UK who will contact you directly.

If your complaint is outside of our remit, we will contact you to advise of this.

You are unsatisfied with the Rail Ombudsman’s handling of your appeal or the appeal outcome

London TravelWatch cannot overturn decisions made by the Rail Ombudsman nor can we investigate your concerns with them.  We do welcome any passenger feedback, so if you are unhappy with any part of your experience appealing your complaint, please let us know.

Bus driver complaints

London TravelWatch welcomes the information shared with us by passengers using the bus network in London. We assess all appeals raised with us and will record all information given to us and use it (with all personal details removed) as evidence in our conversations with TfL.

Unfortunately, there are some bus issues raised by passengers who want to make an appeal but with which we are unable to help:

• bus driver behaviour, for example, rudeness, poor driving or missing a stop.  If you are looking for information about any disciplinary action taken against the driver, we will not be able to provide you with it. This is because employers are not allowed to divulge any information of any disciplinary action taken against any staff member.  TfL issue contracts to bus operators in London, so driver complaints are passed to the operators to deal with: and although TfL do not investigate bus driver complaints themselves, they do record all complaint data made against individual bus operators and consider these records when re-issuing or extending the bus operators contract.
• financial compensation claims for injury on board a bus.  The reason why we are unable to take up appeals of this nature is that this a very specialised area, requiring expertise outside of London TravelWatch’s areas of competency, and because claims are handled by bus companies’ insurers rather than TfL.
• financial compensation for delays to bus services.  The reason is that TfL does not operate a scheme for compensation in these circumstances and so London TravelWatch has no basis on which to approach them to seek such a remedy on behalf of passengers.