A rail union leader has revealed that train operators have served the first legal warning of redundancies as part of the closures of most station ticket offices in England.

The plans, unveiled yesterday, involve many former ticket office staff being given new responsibilities, which could involve working on station concourses to help passengers use ticket machines and answer their questions.

Some operators, including Great Western Railway and South Western Railway, plan to close all their ticket offices. Others will provide Travel Centres (Southeastern) or Customer Information Centres (Greater Anglia) at the busiest stations. Most of the changes are expected to have happened by the end of next year.

Speaking on BBC Radio Surrey this morning, TSSA interim general secretary Peter Pendle said he had received ‘half a dozen communications from the various train operating companies, South Western Trains and GWR included, both issuing Section 188 notices which is the notice you have to give as a first stage to consult on redundancies’.

Railnews has invited the Rail Delivery Group to comment.

Which ticket offices might stay open?

Some operators have released details of their intentions.

Avanti West Coast said its offices at some larger stations would be kept ‘short-term’ for passengers with complicated ticket queries which cannot be resolved on line or at a ticket machine. It said these stations are those managed by Network Rail at London Euston, Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street and Glasgow Central, where AWC runs the ticket offices, and also Preston and Carlisle. 

Greater Anglia plans to open Customer Information Centres at London Liverpool Street, Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Stansted Airport and Cambridge. Of the remaining 47 stations, some would have changes to staffing hours, but no presently staffed station will become unstaffed.

Great Western Railway is proposing to close all its ticket offices by the end of next year, including London Paddington. It has already closed summer-only ticket windows at Looe, Newquay and St Ives.

LNER said it proposed to maintain ticket offices at Edinburgh, Newcastle, York, Doncaster, Peterborough and London King’s Cross, ‘which will continue to offer the same range of products and opening times’.

Northern is proposing to close 131 ticket offices and change the opening hours at 18. It also operates a further 318 stations which do not have ticket offices. Stations which would retain ticket offices are Barrow-in-Furness, Blackburn, Blackpool North, Bolton, Bradford Interchange, Glossop, Harrogate, Hartlepool, Leeds, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester Victoria, Rochdale, St Helens Central, Salford Crescent, Skipton, Warrington Central and Wigan Wallgate. Exceptionally, Hartlepool is presently closed on Sundays, but would open under the new proposals. The opening hours at the other 17 offices will mostly be reduced.  

Southeastern said it serves 180 stations, and runs 142 ticket offices. It is proposing to open Travel Centres at its 14 busiest stations. The other offices will close, but staff will return to 14 stations which are currently unstaffed because of vacancies.

South Western Railway is planning to close all its ticket offices. 

West Midlands Trains said ‘all ticket offices in their current form would close over the next three years’ but that it would introduce a number of ‘hub stations’ offering ‘enhanced retail facilities and customer support’. The ‘hubs’ are proposed at Birmingham Snow Hill, Milton Keynes Central, Northampton, Nuneaton, Sutton Coldfield, University, Walsall, Watford Junction, Wolverhampton and Worcester Foregate Street.

source= http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2023/07/06-ticket-office-axe-fears-grow.html