Transport for London is to be prosecuted over alleged safety failures at Walthamstow Bus Station spanning a period of two decades.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) alleges that between 1 January 2004 and 15 December 2023, TfL failed to ensure that traffic routes at the northern crossing of the bus station were suitable for the pedestrians and the vehicles using them.
The charges come nearly three years after a retired nurse was fatally struck by a route 212 bus at the station in December 2023. Grace Mecaley was 74.
Her death prompted the installation of new permanent pedestrian crossings on the northern and western sides of the station in December 2024. Those followed "temporary signals" added in May that year, put in after an HSE contravention notice filed in March 2024.
A fresh contravention notice was issued in March 2025, after unannounced HSE inspectors found that bus drivers were failing to give pedestrians priority to cross to and from the station's "central island", where passengers board and alight from buses.
A sentencing hearing on the health and safety charges brought against TfL will take place at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday 25 September.
Grace had taken up several positions in local civil society groups, including the Waltham Forest Race Equality Council (WSREC), where she was an executive member from the 1980s until her death.
Through her WSREC role, she became a trustee at the Walthamstow and Chingford Almshouse, a social housing charity providing self-contained accommodation for elderly people. She held the trustee role from 2014 until she stepped down at the end of a four-year term in 2018.
Lorna Murphy, TfL's director of buses, said: "Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Grace Mecaley. Every death on the transport network is devastating, and we're determined to end the trauma caused by loss of life and injury."
