Railways: Coronavirus

(asked on 4th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the findings of the report entitled Transport User Community – role of staff in passengers feeling safe, published by Transport Focus on 7 October 2020 that there is a strong sense that the ideal response to the pandemic would be to see more staff on trains and at the station, rather than less.


Answered by
Chris Heaton-Harris Portrait
Chris Heaton-Harris
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
This question was answered on 9th June 2021

During the course of the pandemic, the Department has worked closely with train operating companies and Network Rail to ensure that staff and passengers are kept safe when travelling on the railway, and recognises the important role which rail staff play in ensuring passengers feel safe when travelling. Government has published Safer Travel guidance, which supports transport operators to understand how to provide safer environments for both staff and passengers. Train operators understand their markets and their customers’ travel patterns and have redeployed rail staff whose work has been affected by the pandemic into different roles, including into stations to support passengers.

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