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Consultation on station changes

On Tuesday 31 October 2023 Transport Focus and London TravelWatch published their response to the industry’s station change proposals and the subsequent decision by the Secretary of State for Transport was that all operators withdraw their proposals.

These proposals were designed to modernise our retail offer, provide better customer service and provide our teams with more varied roles and opportunities for progression while delivering efficiencies for the industry.

Although passenger watchdog Transport Focus has recognised that the majority of our plans met their threshold of representing an improvement for customers, passenger bodies indicated some issues remain unresolved.

We will now take some time to work with the Department for Transport to understand the next steps.

What difference has consultation made?

Over the three months since the consultation was launched, we listened to views from customers, communities and colleagues, and we have been discussing the themes that Transport Focus and London TravelWatch have identified in the national consultation.

As a result of this feedback, we made further improvements to our original proposals, including:

  • Staffing hours: We made sure that retail-trained colleagues would be on hand for the same timespan as today to help customers when they need it. Many of our original proposals aligned with this principle, and we extended this to all GWR proposals.
  • 'Help at Hand' points: We proposed to introduce Welcome Points with 'Help at Hand' buttons at stations with ticket offices where required. They would be clearly marked and accessible, providing a direct link to a retail-trained staff member when they are on duty.
  • Digital first, not only: We changed our proposals to progressively give staff handheld ticket sales devices to support self-service ticket machines. Customers would still find every type of ticket they can get today at a station in the future. Plus, staff would be on hand to show customers the convenience of buying digitally via our app or other options like pay-as-you-go/CPAY. The range of ticket choices would remain just as extensive as before. In addition, the Ticket Vending Machines (TVMs) would be upgraded to sell a wider variety of tickets, and more tickets would become digitally available.
  • Cash availability: We would add cash payment options to all our self-service TVMs where possible.

What were the proposals?

Subject to consultation, ticket office staff would transition to multi-skilled roles – similar to those already in place at GWR since 2007. This would allow staff to help more customers with a wider range of issues, including helping them to buy tickets, wherever they are on the station.

This would, however, mean changes to how our station teams are organised, and some ticket offices would close as the new roles are introduced.

The public consultation was on an individual station-by-station basis. This includes publication of Equality Impact Assessments for each proposal and is independently run by industry watchdogs Transport Focus and London TravelWatch.

Why does the current approach need to change?

Digital tickets have made it easier and faster for customers to buy and manage tickets online, which means fewer people than ever are using ticket offices.

The approach would help bring station retailing up-to-date from 1996, when the rules on how to sell tickets were set and before the invention of the smartphone. Back then, 82% of all tickets were sold at ticket offices nationally, compared to less than 15% on average today. Bringing staff out from offices would allow the railway to respond to the generational shift in customer behaviour, in common with many other industries and organisations that have long since done so such as Transport for London, most airlines and many banks and supermarkets.

The consultation was open from Wednesday 5 July to Friday 1 September 2023 and passengers were able to send comments to transport watchdogs, Transport Focus and London TravelWatch.

More information about local ticket offices

The original consultation documents will continue to be available here for reference.

A full British Sign Language (BSL) version of the Station Change Proposal can be seen in the video below:

You can download the original consultation documents for local ticket offices in PDF form below:

You can also download an audio version of how the original proposals would affect local ticket offices below: