Ticket Office Closures

For Northern, there will be 131 ticket office closures, plus 19 travel centre and customer information point closures that they’re not mentioning.

The remaining 18 ticket offices will have reduced opening hours, with only one (Leeds) open after 6pm. Most other customer service staff will also disappear by 6pm.

Customer service staff numbers at the company will drop from the current 507 roles (with 54 vacancies at the moment) to just 235. That’s more than a 50% reduction in staff.

Staffing of stations that no longer have a ticket office will drop to as little as 2 hours per day, usually between 7am and 9am, with little ability to be very helpful in the event of disruption (not their fault), and lost property recovery will be very hit and miss.

As an example, Newton-le-Willows ticket office is currently open from 6am until 5 minutes to midnight, what we would call “first train to last train”, but these proposals will see that replaced by staff pointing at a ticket machine from 7am to midday.

It will be impossible to buy some tickets and virtually impossible to pay by cash at most stations. In times of disruption it may be near impossible to buy a ticket for your chosen train, leading to problems with validity, for which you could face a fine of more than £100.

It will be more difficult to obtain refunds or correct any mistakes you have made when buying your tickets.

This is their idea of improving the customer experience, not just the train company, but also the DfT.

A “consultation” has started today, it will run for 3 weeks only. Go to http://www.transportfocus.org.uk/train-station-ticket… to find the correct form for your local railway station.

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