PLANS to close up to 974 ticket offices at stations operated by operators managed by the Department for Transport (DfT) have been rejected.
A consultation ran between July 5 and September 1, during which time independent passenger watchdog Transport Focus and London TravelWatch received more than 750,000 responses. The initial period was three weeks, but this was extended.
The affected operators were Avanti West Coast, c2c, Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Railway, Greater Anglia, Govia Thameslink Railway, Great Western Railway, London North Eastern Railway, London Northwestern Railway, Northern, South Western Railway, TransPennine Express and West Midlands Railway. Stations managed by operators not controlled by the DfT were unaffected.
Launching the consultation, Rail Delivery Group chief executive Jacqueline Starr said that the way tickets were being bought had changed, saying that 12% of tickets are bought from ticket offices. The plan was that staff would move to ‘more visible’ positions on stations. However, there were concerns that jobs would be lost.
On October 31, Transport Focus published
