It goes back to historic pasts the British way of living vs American way of living.
For decades people have claimed that the button did nothing to speed up the time taken for the doors to close and was put there simply for the placebo effect, which made passengers feel more in control.
This week Karen Penafiel, executive director of the US National Elevator Industry, told the New York Times that lift buttons in the US had not worked for decades.
The change happened since the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, which meant that lifts had to ensure that someone with a disability had time to get inside.
However Nick Mellor, technical director of the Lift and Escalator Industry Association (LEIA) said that it was not the case in Britain.
"It varies according to the application of the lift, so a lift in Canary Wharf, for example, will have a much shorter delay than a quiet residential block, but the close door buttons do still work.
"Close door buttons aren't on all lifts but they do tend do work when they are present. We have an equivalent standard to the American with Disabilities Act which determines how long the doors should stay open, so there is already a built-in delay.
"It might be that people have noticed a bigger delay in some lifts and thought that the close-door buttons are not working."
Apex Lifts, London’s biggest lift manufacturing and servicing company, also said the systems work differently to in the US.
"Over in the UK we normally tend to wire up the buttons so they do actually work," said a spokesman. "They are normally most common in places like multi-story car parks."
However it would not be the first time that buttons have turned out to be dummies. In 2013 it emerged that many buttons on pedestrian crossings in Britain are fakes, with traffic controlled by an automated system rather than the request of walkers.
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