Still time to have your say on the closure of High Peak railway ticket offices

In a national shake-up, station ticket offices are closing and Northern, which operates trains in the High Peak, is looking to close ticket offices at 131 stations including Buxton, Whaley Bridge, Manchester and Stockport.

The proposal was out for consultation and the deadline has been extended so people can still have their say until 11.59pm on Friday September, 1.

High Peak Unite Community took to the streets to inform people about the closures. Group secretary Kasey Carver said: “It has been argued only a minority of tickets are purchased through ticket offices.

“However, ticket offices are used to plan 180m journeys and it is difficult to understand how customer service will improve given the associated redundancies; some train companies are planning to cut two thirds of their staff.

“This is just about making profits which are expected to reach record levels of over £400m in this current year.”

The ticket office in Glossop is one of only a handful of offices not scheduled to close in this round but High Peak Unite say this is just for technical reasons and it ‘is inevitable it will close in due course’.

Concerns have been raised by people who do not have a smart phone so rely on the ticket office or those who are disabled and in a wheelchair and say the machines are too high for them to use.

High Peak Unite Community say if these cuts go through they will be as ‘damaging as the Beeching’s line closures’.

A spokesperson for Northern said: “Our proposals include adapting to the significant reduction in the use of ticket offices nationally by closing ticket offices at 131 stations and making changes to ticket office hours at 18 stations.

“Only 1 in 6 journeys on Northern services are bought through a ticket office, compared with almost half of all journeys in 2018. As the railways adapts to evolving customer behaviour and to ensure that it can thrive in the long-term, the industry needs to modernise how rail tickets are sold.”

The original consultation period ended in July however, the public response has been so large that it has been extended. Have your say via transportfocus.org.uk/ticket-office-consultation