Rail operator Southern refused to release CCTV images to help police investigate the theft of a passenger’s belongings, worth more than £1,000, because the company did not want to pay the cost of downloading the footage.

Neil Garratt, deputy Conservative opposition leader at Sutton Council, had a bag containing smart clothing stolen on the journey back from the his party’s conference in Birmingham on Wednesday.

After contacting both Southern and British Transport Police (BTP,) he was informed the beleaguered rail company had refused to release the images to officers because the rail firm deemed the cost of retrieving the footage was too high.

In an email addressed to the councillor, BTP explained the company had introduced a “stricter” vetting procedure based on the severity of an incident following a rise in requests for CCTV images.

It read: “[Southern’s] reply was: Due to the labour intensive logistics involved in retrieving on train CCTV we have had to introduce a stricter vetting procedure to accommodate the rise in requests.

“This will help us to ensure evidence will be produced for all serious incidents on the network. Unfortunately as a result of this we will not be able to process this request.”

Cllr Garratt said: “Southern are a train company that are, at the moment, facing a huge amount of criticism from those who use the network – and so for them to give passengers another reason to be frustrated with them seems silly to me.

“There are signs up all over its trains saying ‘warning, CCTV’, but it turns out if it is just a theft then it is not ever going to be looked into. It doesn’t seem right to me.

“It could well be that this person is known to the police, could already be wanted for another crime, and so Southern’s attitude is all wrong.

“More Southern passengers will have their things stolen if they let thieves operate at will across their network by doing nothing to help the police catch them.

“Thieves seem to have worked that out for themselves.”

His bag was swiped on the Southern 3.36pm service from Victoria to Sutton.

The Conservative councillor said he was lucky he was travelling home and nothing “irreplaceable” was stolen.

He said that the items stolen had cost roughly £1,000 in total, adding that the bag only contained three days worth of smart clothing.

A BTP spokesman said: “Officers from British Transport Police began an investigation after a man reported his bag was stolen on a train at Crystal Palace on Wednesday 5 October.

“The theft was reported to have taken place on board the 3.36pm Southern service from Victoria to Sutton.

“However, as we have been unable to obtain CCTV from the train operator the investigation has been filed pending further information coming to light.”

A spokesman for Southern said if the carriage in which an icident occurred is unknown the company does not have the resources to look into every case.

He said: "We are sorry that we were unable to provide CCTV footage in this case. 

"If it is unknown which carriage an incident occurred, it takes a huge amount of resource to look through every system and unfortunately we do not have the manpower to search every system on every carriage for every incidence.

"If it is known which carriage the incident took place, we can target that system for review. However, we do carry out a full search of every system if the incident involves offences such as assault."

The spokesman added that Southern are reviewing its policy to improve the process.

Anyone with any information on the theft is asked to contact BTP by sending a text to 61016 or calling 0800 40 50 40, quoting reference 363 of 05/10/2016.