Fare hikes for you, bonuses for them: TfL’s pay boom is leaving Londoners worse off

In March of this year, tube fares will go up by 5.8 per cent due to it being one of the conditions of the £2.2bn funding deal that TfL agreed with the government.

But will this in any way fix and prevent services from breaking down and making the tube feel more reliable? I doubt it.

And yet, behind the scenes, Transport for London is quietly presiding over one of the biggest pay booms in the public sector.

New TaxPayers’ Alliance analysis shows that the number of TfL staff receiving at least £100,000 a year in total remuneration has exploded by 189 per cent in just two years.

In 2022-23, there were 766. By 2024-25, that figure had surged to at least 2,21, and in the last year alone, it jumped by 68 per cent.

This isn’t happening in a thriving, self-sufficient organisation. TfL still relies on billions in taxpayer support. Londoners are paying more for tickets while the government props up the network with emergency funding deals, and yet, instead of restraint and performance-linked pay packages, what we are seeing is a six-figure gold rush at the top.

At the very peak sits TfL Commissioner Andy Lord, who took home £639,164 last year. Nearly £190,000 of that was in bonuses. That bonus alone is the equivalent of more than 53,000 peak-time Tube fares or to put it another way, it would cover someone’s weekly Zone 1 - 2 travel for more than 80 years.

And it’s not just the boss. Senior executives are walking away with huge pensions, bonuses and compensation packages while the network struggles.

One TfL official received over £230,000 simply for leaving their job. Another had more than £60,000 paid into their pension on top of a salary already north of £240,000.

This is not a story about envy; it’s about priorities. TfL is meant to be a public service, not a corporate bonus machine. Londoners put up with packed trains, delayed services and fare hikes because they’re told there is no money. Yet somehow there is always money for bigger pay packets at the top.

Sadiq Khan talks endlessly about fairness, but under his watch, TfL has become a place where six-figure salaries and bonuses are multiplying while ordinary passengers are squeezed. Every pound spent on inflated pay and bonuses is a pound not spent on reliability, safety or keeping fares down.

Londoners deserve a transport authority focused on running trains, not rewarding executives. Until TfL gets its costs under control, especially at the top, fare rises and bailouts will keep coming, and passengers will keep paying for a system that too often feels like it’s run for insiders, not the public.

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Anne Strickland is a Researcher at the TaxPayers' Alliance

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