Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of trains have run without second member of staff for (a) all and (b) part of the service on GTR Southern Railway services in (a) 2016, (b) 2017 and (c) 2018.

Driver Controlled Operation (DCO) was rolled out on Southern from January 2017. Operationally this means that drivers open and close the doors of the train – a modern and safe way of working. What this means for passengers is that they now have dedicated customer service staff (an on-board supervisor, or OBS) on every train that previously had a conductor. Should an OBS - at short notice - not be able to meet the train, then the train is no longer cancelled, as it would have been with a conductor.

In 2016, no Southern services ran without a scheduled second member of staff on board. However, 8,119 trains were cancelled in 2016 because there was no conductor. This is because trains which are scheduled to run with a conductor cannot be run without a second qualified person on board.

In 2017, 1.6% of Southern services scheduled to run with an OBS ran without an OBS for their whole journey, and 2.2% ran without an OBS for part of their journey.

In 2018, 0.4% of Southern services scheduled to run with an OBS ran without an OBS for their whole journey, and 1.0% ran without an OBS for part of their journey.

In the figures for January and February 2019, 0.1% of Southern services scheduled to run with an OBS ran without an OBS for their whole journey, and 0.5% ran without an OBS for part of their journey.