Havering’s Tube stations suffered just one unplanned closure between New Year’s Day 2018 and the end of July this year, new figures released by Transport for London have revealed – but it was a long one.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request to TfL revealed that Havering only suffered one unplanned closure in that period - but it was the sixth longest in London, affecting just over eight hours of services.

That happened when "unsafe masonry" began falling from the ceiling of the District line's Upminster Bridge Tube Station on March 14 2018.

The falling tiles led to the station being closed from 5.30pm to 5.25am.

At the time, the Recorder reported that customers had actually had to dodge falling masonry as they made their way past the station's ticket office and out onto Upminster Road.

TfL confirmed it was business as usual at the station by 6.39am that morning.

Across the capital, the longest closure recorded in that time was at Hampstead Station in Camden, which on May 7 2018 was closed from 5.30am to 9.20pm.

The figures released by TfL only relate to Tube stations, and do not include overground services such as Crossrail, c2c or TfL Rail.

In neighbouring borough Redbridge, Gants Hill station suffered the most closures, with four.

These took place on January 11, April 18, and April 27 2018, and May 25 this year.

The April 27 incident related to a fire alert that was eventually found to be a false alarm.

The average length of closures at Gants Hill was 20 minutes.

Elsewhere in the borough, Wanstead Station suffered unplanned closures twice - on October 22 2018 and January 18 2019.

Those closures lasted for four minutes and 20 minutes respectively, for an average length of 12 minutes.

Redbridge Station, which serves the Central line, was closed for nine minutes on May 23 this year, while Snaresbrook Station was closed for 12 minutes less than a week later on May 29.

That means that the average closure length in Redbridge over that 18 month period was 15 and a half minutes.