Charles Horton
Govia Thameslink Railway
PO Box 10240
Ashby-De-La-Zouch
LE65 9EB
Firstly on industrial action taken by the RMT – the root of this is a change to the role of on-board staff. In simple terms we are giving responsibility for closing the doors to the driver, something which is already done on 40% of existing Southern services. This will free up on-board staff to move through trains and provide the highly visible and direct customer service that passengers tell us they want. This change will also mean that when services are disrupted we will not have to wait for a conductor to be present to run the train, reducing the level of delay and disruption experienced by passengers. Regrettably the RMT trade union which represents conductors has objected to this change in principle and refused to discuss it with us. Instead they have chosen to take strike action which has caused massive disruption to our customers. We remain open for talks but the union refuses to entertain the idea of our evolved conductor role and have encouraged members not to take part in the process. However, we are pressing ahead with our plans to evolve the conductor role and doing everything we can to ensure our staff are fully involved in the process. In doing so we are guaranteeing that nobody will lose their job or suffer a pay cut.
Regrettably in the past couple of weeks we have also seen a significant increase in levels of sickness amongst those performing conductor roles. This has resulted in a higher than normal level of cancellations. We have staff procedures which we follow when staff call in sick and these are being employed to support staff, and ensure they return to work as soon as possible. However, in light of the continuing high levels of sickness, we have taken the decision to pre-emptively cancel 19 trains each day which we will be listing on our website and they will be shown in journey planners. Managing it in this way will mean that we can reduce the number of ad hoc cancellations overall, and provide a greater degree of certainty. I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our passengers and your constituents who are affected by these issues.
In terms of the compensation, there are special arrangements in place for passengers affected by the strike action. Details are available at www.southernrailway.com/strikecompensation. This sits beside the standard Delay Repay system which applies to journeys delayed over 30 minutes. For the dedicated strike compensation, 60 per cent of the claims have gone through on our new automated system with no need for any human intervention. This has been designed to streamline processing making it much quicker for claims to be dealt with. The others will have been handled by an advisor, checking where there were issues with filling in the form with missing details for example.
For regular delay repay claims, there can be issues with processing or the duration but these are relatively very small compared to the number processed successfully. Some of the concerns naturally arise when claims are correctly declined if for example the delay was not over 30 minutes, or it is a duplicate claim. Where passengers do escalate an issue the team will resolve these quickly. Just by way of example to illustrate this, in the last four week period, complaints about Delay Repay represented just 0.43% of all claims processed in the same period.
On our station plans, the responses to our public consultation went directly to the two statutory passengers bodies (Transport Focus and London TravelWatch), or they were shared with them. We have then had discussions with the passenger groups focused on addressing key issues raised in the responses and we have since submitted a revised proposal. We now await further feedback before we can provide more detail on a planned roll out and what that will mean for each station.
Finally, on the Shoreham subway, I understand that Network Rail has been reviewing the proposal and issues here and would like to discuss these with the local society and yourself. Colleagues at Network Rail plan to be in touch to set this up, and we will of course take part. Can I ask that you provide an idea of dates that might be suitable and we can pass this on so that a mutually convenient time can be confirmed.