Chaotic scenes at London Bridge Station were described as “completely unacceptable” by Mayor Boris Johnson yesterday. Thousands of commuters found their journeys delayed for more than an hour on Wednesday because of renovations at the station and an attempted suicide.

London Bridge station was described as “dangerous” on Tuesday night following record injuries due to overcrowding and has been heavily criticised, as rail chiefs were told to “sort it out” by London Boris Johnson. Passengers were forced to vault and clamber below the barriers in the rush hour crush as commuter Ella Vize tweeted “I’ve never felt so unsafe in London.”

Network Rail said train services were delayed by a person being hit by a train near Streatham Common, in combination with the drastically reduced size of the station whilst it undergoes remodelling.

Network Rail switched off the power supply to the trains between 4 and 5pm in a measure to reduce further harm to the person who jumped in front of the train. Turning off the power affected all the services as Network Rail said: “we’re sorry this incident has caused the disruption it has.”

A queuing system was put in place for safety reasons but the crowds were so huge that they closed the station doors on the advice of the transport police and reopened them once the crowds inside had begun to disperse. Shadow London minister Sadiq Khan said London Bridge last night was “more like a football stadium from the 1980s than a train station”.

There have been many improvement works under way to increase the capacity of the station by 2/3rds, but while these works are under way the capacity of the station is greatly reduced which is causing many overcrowding issues.

by Isabelle Clark and Phoebe Scott