The Railway Delivery Group have recently announced they are proposing a huge closure of ticket offices around the country.
To see more, go to https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/uk-rail-industry/customer-focused-reform/customer-focused-stations
Below is our response to this. By following the above link, you are able to ‘have your say’ as individuals. Public consultation has been extended to 1st.September 2023.
our response..
‘We write to oppose the changes you are proposing to make on South Western Railways and in particular to the changes at Winchester station. The station is heavily used by residents and tourists and it would be represent a deterioration of the service to close the remaining office. The closure of the office on the London-bound platform was not welcome – it was used a lot during peak times; but to close the main office on the South-bound platform would be an enormous loss. Your consultation states that 75% of tickets are purchased online or through vending machines – what of the remaining 25%? This is a significant number of passengers who will be unable to purchase tickets, or will struggle with purchasing the correct ticket. Our objections stem from the need to provide universal, accessible, reliable, safe public transport. Removing the ticket offices is not in the interest of passengers and will not improve services. It is shortsighted, short-termist measure which will reduce accessibility and use of the rail service. The claim that stations will have the same numbers or increases in numbers of “multi-skilled” staff is doubtful. We already see many times at weekends and evenings, or during periods of staff sickness when the station is either unstaffed or staffed by contractors (who do not know anything about tickets or journey planning).
At present ticket offices are the only form of regulated station staffing, and if those are removed train companies will be under no statutory obligation to provide staff – and it is easy to imagine that numbers of staff will dwindle over time. The ticketing system is currently extremely complicated and the ticket office is the only way to ensure that passengers are able to access the appropriate and best value fare for their journey. Some products and services are not available either online or using the vending machines such as permission to travel, refunds, some discounts, connections with buses & ferries. Online services do not provide all route options, favouring the more expensive in many cases. Accessibility for disabled people will be greatly reduced and there has been widespread opposition from disability campaign groups. These changes as presented will result in reduced accessibility. Have equality impact assessments been carried out at every station to ensure that there is no discrimination? Please reconsider this in the context of passenger safety, accessibility, value for money and overall quality of experience. We need to be encouraging more people to use public transport in order to reduce carbon emissions. Retrograde steps such as closing station offices will prejudice this’.
