Rail operator Southern has backtracked on its refusal to hand over CCTV footage to help police investigate the theft of a passenger’s luggage from a train.

Neil Garratt, deputy leader of the Conservative opposition at Sutton Council, lost clothing worth about £1,000 when his bag was stolen as he travelled back from his party’s conference in Birmingham on Wednesday.

But after calling the British Transport Police he was told the under-fire railway franchise deemed it too costly to retrieve the footage and pass it to officers.

In an email sent to Mr Garrett Southern said that “due to labour intensive logistics involved in retrieving on train CCTV we have had to introduce a stricter vetting procedure to accommodate the rise in requests.”

However, after the Sutton Guardian reported the story on Friday, Southern agreed to hand over the footage to police.

A spokesman for the company said: "Since we received the complaint, we dispatched a member of our team to our train depot to retrieve the CCTV drives from each carriage.

“The footage from each carriage was viewed and the incident was located. This process took around five hours to complete and illustrates just how labour intensive this process is. The footage has been made available to British Transport Police."

Cllr Garratt said: “Disappointingly Southern is only talking to me via the newspaper, but still I’m glad that they’re rethinking the policy and will now pass the CCTV to the police.

“I doubt I’ll see my bag again, but I hope that for the next victim they do the right thing first time.”