The following article was extracted from the Guardian of September 6 2011
Union warns hundreds of rail ticket offices face closure
Transport department cuts could lead to job losses and leave 675 stations unstaffed in England and Wales
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 September 2011 21.43 BST
larger | smaller
A government-commissioned report has recommended the replacement of ticket offices with machines. Photograph: NewsCast
One in four railway ticket offices in England and Wales could close – costing more than 1,000 jobs – under recommendations “buried” in the small print of a government-commissioned report, a transport union said.
The Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) said it had discovered a “hit list” of 675 stations that could be left unstaffed, including 265 in London and the south-east and 114 in the north-west.
The list appears in a report drawn up by Sir Roy McNulty on how to achieve savings in the railway industry, but it was not published in the executive summary. TSSA officials discovered the recommendation only when they read the full report, which runs to hundreds of pages.
Gerry Doherty, the TSSA’s general secretary, called on Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, to reject the cuts, warning that passengers, especially women, would feel less safe travelling and tickets would be more difficult to buy.
The report recommends the replacement of ticket offices with machines, a trend that is growing throughout the railway industry.
“This is a double whammy for millions of passengers,” said Doherty. “Last month, they were told that fares will rise by 25% over the next three years, and they are now set to lose one in four ticket offices. Not only are unmanned stations less secure, tickets bought from machines are usually more expensive.
“Philip Hammond should come to the dispatch box in the next few days and give a clear undertaking that he is going to ditch these draconian cuts in services to passengers.”
The union is launching an “SOS – Save our Station ticket offices” campaign which will tour the party conferences over the next four weeks urging MPs to save ticket offices in their constituencies.
Doherty accused Hammond of being on a “political suicide mission”, given that 40% of the stations on the list are in Tory heartlands. “He seems determined to test commuter support for the Tories to destruction by hiking fares, which are already the most expensive in Europe, and shutting nearly 700 ticket offices.”
The government is expected to respond fully next month to the report, which maintained that the railway industry could make savings of £1bn a year.
A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “We are considering the findings of Sir Roy McNulty’s independent report and any of his proposed changes to rail fares or ticketing will be examined as part of a government review.”
Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT transport union, said: “This information on the shocking scale of the ticket office massacre is a wake-up call to the public as the government prepares to reveal their formal response to the McNulty rail review. These cuts would turn the rail network into a criminals’ paradise, and that’s why we are uniting workers and passengers in a massive campaign of resistance.”
© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.