3 In the early hours of Thursday, 3 April 2003 there was smoke rising from the Central Line track at Tottenham Court Road, which led to a two hour line closure. The smoke was a direct result of glue and poster paper build up between a number of porcelain pots and the tunnel wall, which combined with dust dislodged from a deep clean of the station by JNP Infraco on the previous evening created a fire hazard once trains ran over the affected pots. Seven pots were affected, of which two were broken by London Fire Brigade as a precaution because of the smoke emitting from them.
Four different parties work on this part of the line, and it took time to reach resolution of this incident
4 The following four parties work on this part of the line:
■ Viacom - Private contractors to LUL, who put posters up at the station in November 2002.
■ Infraco JNP - In its capacity as station owners, it carried out an overnight "deep clean" of the station on the night of 2 April.
■ Shadow Infraco BCV (still under public control at the time) - Responsible for inspection of the track every 30 days.
■ LUL - as operators of the track and station.
5 Reporting followed standard procedures with the completion of an Incident Report Form. This was followed by fault attribution negotiations because there was disagreement as to who was responsible for the incident. At Level A discussions, there remained a disagreement over who was at fault, and the case was escalated to Level B, where the parties decided that responsibility should be split 60 LUL: 40 Infraco BCV (still part of LUL at the time). This reflected the judgement that Viacom, and therefore LUL, were primarily to blame for not taking due care with the poster glue, while Infraco BCV should take some responsibility because their inspections did not spot the glue and enable remedial action to take place. Although the deep clean displaced some dust onto the glue, no attribution was made to JNP.
6 Level B agreement was reached on 21 May, approximately six weeks after the incident occurred.