The Government and the rail industry have said no ‘final decision’ has been taken on ticket office closures, despite a press report stating that plans to close 83% of one rail firm’s ticket offices are ‘hardwired’ into a new contract.
Citing ‘industry sources’, the Telegraph reported that 25 of East Midlands Railway’s (EMR) 30 ticket offices are due to be cut across the firm’s more than 100 stations.
Loughborough Station, run by EMR, currently has a ticket office
It said this was broadly in line with the Government’s ‘Industry Change Programmes’, which were developed by former transport secretary Grant Shapps and are now due to be taken forward by his replacement, Anne-Marie Trevelyan.
The Telegraph said it had learnt that Whitehall officials had ‘hardwired’ the cuts into EMR’s new contract, under which the Department for Transport (DfT) pays the rail operator to run services and collect revenue for the Government.
It added that sources had said the conditions written into the EMR contract will be replicated across the country.
Noting the recent change of ministers, a spokesperson for the DfT said no final decision had been taken.
A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group, which represents rail firms, told Transport Network: ‘No final decision has been taken on ticket offices.
‘We are looking at how we can move staff from behind glass windows in ticket offices to provide face-to-face assistance elsewhere on the station where they are closer to customers and better placed to help them.’
However, planned cuts to staffing are at the heart of the ongoing industrial action by rail workers, with both ministers and the RDG linking pay rises for staff to ‘reform’.
Responding to new planned strikes next month, an RDG spokesperson said: ‘We want to give our people a pay rise, but without the reforms we are proposing, we simply cannot deliver pay increases.’
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