Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, when his Department plans to publish its own impact assessment of the closure of rail ticket offices.

When proposing major changes to ticket office opening hours – including closures – train operators are required to take into account the adequacy of the proposed alternatives in relation to the needs of passengers who are disabled, and to include this in the notice of the proposal sent to other operators and passenger groups. When consulting, operators should have also clearly considered other equality-related needs.

Operators prepared Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs), and these were available on train operator’s websites during the consultation. Government departments do not typically publish EIAs whilst policy is under development. We will consider publishing the EIA once we have considered the outcomes of the industry-led Ticketing and Settlement Agreement process.