Key Messages
- Night Tube will be not be operational from 19 July
- Customers need to plan a safe route home before they attend
- Venues should consider the welfare of customers as they return
Introduction
As 19 July approaches, London’s world-class nightlife sector is looking forward to welcoming Londoners and visitors to the capital back through its doors. This is an important time for venues, especially nightclubs, who can now start to rebuild after 16 months of closure.
However, there are important issues that venues and operators will need to consider around transport. Pre-pandemic, Night Tube and Night Overground services were a popular method of transport at weekends for both customers and staff to get home. TfL is working to restore these services, but they will not be returning straight away at Stage Four. It’s likely that customers won’t be aware of this, and could lead to many people leaving a venue with no idea how to get home. This presents potential safety and vulnerability issues.
Operators are encouraged to start communicating to event ticket holders and their regular audiences as soon as possible that they need to consider their journey home and the options that are available to them.
Late Night Transport Options
While Night Tube services aren’t running, there are still alternative late night transport options available for customers and staff, which venues and operators should be highlighting.
London’s night time economy has, and continues to be, supported by an extensive night bus network and Taxi and Private Hire services. Until the Night Tube returns, in your customer and event ticketing communications we would encourage you to ask your customers to consider planning their journey in advance, making use of those services.
Please direct people to journey planning apps, such as TfL Go App, which provides Tube status and live bus arrival information in two taps. We’d also ask that people are mindful of the first and last Tube services before starting their journey.
For venues and organisers, we are asking that when planning travel for events you make use of our night bus spider maps which provide a list of routes available at busy night time destinations. Spider maps show all day and night routes across London and you can search for additional maps here as well as on our live map.
Many Night Tube stations are served by taxi ranks. You can find a map of these ranks here. Until Night Tube returns, we will seek to support areas that may require additional temporary ranks or marshalling.
You can find out more about how we are keeping the transport network clean and a low crime environment as well as our priorities on tackling hate crime and unwanted sexual behaviour. Please encourage your customers to report any crime or incident they may experience or witness.
Vulnerability and Getting Home Safely
We know that there is a huge pent up demand to return to venues. There are also around 850,000 young people who turned 18 during lockdown who have yet to experience London’s vibrant night time economy.
The responsibility of operators to respond to issues of the welfare of customers is key to making reopening a success. The Met Police’s Welfare and Vulnerability Engagement (WAVE) training explains these responsibilities. Operators are encouraged to remind all staff, including security and door staff, of the need to ensure vulnerable people are not put into a situation that could lead to harm.
If operators are worried about how to support vulnerable people as they reopen, they should contact their local Met licensing team who will be able to offer advice on addressing issues.
