MACS Response to LNER Ticket Office Closures

I am responding, on behalf of the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, to object to your proposals to close most of the ticket offices on the Edinburgh-London route . As an organisation, we cover Scottish passengers and of course Scottish stations are not affected by these proposals. However, a number of Scottish passengers will travel South and be affected and we are responding on this basis.

Our objection is straight-forward.

There is now significant evidence to show that disabled passengers are more reliant on ticket offices than other passengers. Recent survey work by the Great British Rail Transition Team, for instance, supports this. Therefore the figures that you happily quote for the % of passengers that use ticket offices will be much higher for your most vulnerable, disabled passengers. One of the reasons for this is that not all ticket machines are accessible to those with disabilities and online offerings are not always available or usable to those with various disabilities.

We believe that there should be no ticket office closures proposed until all ticket machines and online sales are accessible for all disabled passengers. In addition, we believe these proposals should be withdrawn until you have fully assessed the level of usage of ticket offices by disabled passengers. We see no evidence of this in what you have published.

In the case of LNER, some of the closures proposed are for very substantial stations, e.g. Darlington. We believe that wholesale closure at this level is entirely unacceptable for disabled passengers.

The Consultation on these proposals has been constructed in a curious way so that one must respond to individual train operating companies, despite the fact that they are all proposing the same thing. Our comments apply equally to the other train operating companies, but we have responded to you as one of the main operators into Scotland.

Simon Watkins
Rail Lead
Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland