Nearly half a million Tube maps had to be destroyed last year after Morden station was put in the wrong fare zone.

A Freedom of Information Act request by the Mirror has shown 474,280 maps were printed in May 2016 that put Morden in the tram zone, rather than zone four.

The tiny mistake was originally spotted by London blogger Diamond Geezer.

Pocket maps, costing just 1p for 12, carried most of the mistakes. But almost 4,000 of the wrongly printed maps were more than a metre wide and cost up to £2 apiece.

The cost of destroying the maps would have cost TfL under £9,000.

In a statement TfL said the error was discovered during printing in May 2016 and all maps were recycled.

A spokesperson said: “Through the procurement efficiencies that we have been making, we were able to recover these costs and still produce the required number of Tube maps within our overall print budget."

"No copies of the map (both physical and pocket) were put up in public areas or on trains on the Tube network. However a delivery of the pocket maps were sent to Victoria Coach Station and Gatwick Airport, these were then collected."

"For reference - we generally get through around 1.3 million pocket tube maps a month across our Tube and rail network and Visitor Information Centres."