Local public consultation now closed
Between Wednesday 5th July and Friday 1 September 2023, customers were invited to comment to transport watchdogs Transport Focus and London TravelWatch on proposals made by rail operators about how tickets are sold and to improve customer service.
We are now working with both watchdogs to review your feedback and will keep you updated on next steps. We would like to thank you for taking part.
The rest of this page contains information from during the local public consultation period.
South Western Railway is proposing changes to the way we provide customer service and sell tickets at our stations.
This proposal forms part of plans to modernise the railway and bring it more in line with modern consumer expectations.
Over the past decade, we have seen significantly reduced usage of ticket offices as customers move to alternative, more convenient ways of buying tickets. Importantly:
- Seventy-five per cent of SWR passenger journeys are already made using smart media - contactless, Oyster, Tap2Go, SWR Touch Smartcards, eTickets
- The vast majority of ticket types are already available via smart media, online or at ticket vending machines
- Of the 12% of tickets bought at ticket offices nation-wide last year, an estimated 99% could have been bought using a ticket vending machine or online
To modernise our retailing offer, we are proposing to transition our station colleagues to new multi-skilled roles with a clear focus on helping our customers. Our proposals will create a single team on each station, working together to help customers with different aspects of their journeys from journey planning to ticket purchasing.
In particular, all station colleagues above our apprentices will be trained to support customers with their retail choices, and by bringing them out of the ticket offices and into the stations, they will provide more visible and personal help to our customers.
Ultimately, by working together at stations as a single team, there will be more colleagues available to help customers with their retail choices.
South Western Railway is proposing to close all of our ticket offices. Customers will still be able to access the same products and services as they do today through South Western Railway’s website, our mobile app, contactless payment, pay as you go, at our customer contact centre, or at the station.
We will continue to meet all our commitments on providing accessibility for passengers, including passengers with reduced mobility and people requiring in‑person assistance.
By introducing modern retailing, we believe we can even better connect people and communities across South West London and the South East of England every day.
Further information on the proposal including any changes to individual stations can be found in our Station Change Proposal here (PDF, 3.06Mb).
For a plain text version (.txt) of the Station Change Proposal please download here (txt, 56Kb).
For a Open Doc text version (.odt) of the Station Change Proposal please download here (odt, 4.10Mb).
For an EasyRead version (.pdf) of the Station Change Proposal please download here (PDF, 3.28Mb).
For a large print version (.pdf) of the Station Change Proposal please download here (PDF, 5.37Mb).
Click here for an audio version of our consultation and each station.
A Full British Sign Language (BSL) transcript of the proposal can be seen the video below:
We have published an overarching Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) subject to consultation - to clearly show what we are doing to protect the interests of people with accessibility requirements as part of this process. We are creating Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs) for each station. The published EqIA is a live document subject to change following the public consultation, as well as consultation and support from our Accessibility and Inclusion Forum. Click here to download EqIA (PDF, 348kb).
