Minutes:
Richard Isaac from Northern Rail gave the following verbal update:
• There was a major piece of work being undertaken around the future of stations across the industry that was launched earlier in July.
• The consultation period for the future of the stations was due to close today but had been extended due to the size of the network for two further days and would end on the 28th of July.
• Colleagues were encouraged to comment on the impact of the proposed changes to the staffing of rail stations.
• It was highlighted that the timings of the new role of ‘‘Journey Maker’’ for attendance at several stations in South Yorkshire, were not set in stone and were yet to be decided.
• There would be a full equality impact assessment completed for every station impacted by the proposed changes.
• Northern Rail were looking at the mobilisation of the changes from early next year and employees at Northern Rail had been advised of the voluntary redundancy process.
• In context, of the 149 stations where Northern had a staff ticket office across the network, the proposed changes would reduce that number to 18. This included the proposal for no staff ticket office at Rotherham, Swinton and Meadowhall.
• There would be a ‘‘Journey Maker’’ in attendance at these locations, however the hours would be drastically reduced from the current staffing hours.
The Chair thanked Richard Isaac for the update and welcomed questions from members which led to the following discission points being raises:
• The consultation was industry wide, and members were advised to comment on the consultation and have an input into the ‘‘Journey Maker’’ availability at the stations. The ‘‘Journey Maker’’ would be there to assist customers and there was the opportunity within the consultation period to amend the current proposed hours for this role.
• There was industrial action scheduled for Saturday 29th July which would result in services being significantly reduced. The key route strategy would be run and this would affect services on Friday as they would finish earlier and services would start later than usual on Sunday.
• There was a strike by a trade union scheduled for the following week and this would impact service delivery for a further few weeks. This would have a big impact on customers as it would coincide with the summer holidays.
• Northern Rail were hoping to engage with engineering links from colleagues within the Rotherham area around opportunities for Northern Rails engineering depots in Leeds and Hull. There would be a visit there in autumn to highlight the engineering opportunities that were available in the industry.
• There was a shortage of engineers in the industry and Northern Rail were hoping to engage and open opportunities up to young people in South Yorkshire, an update on this would be provided to the group in due course.
• The Railway Guardian App had been re-launched and it was recommended that colleagues download and share the app to raise awareness across their networks.
• A group of young people from Bradford City Football Club were in the process of creating an awareness raising film on the app. This was predominately young women between the age of sixteen to twenty and the film was focused on the need to report unwanted sexual behaviour across the rail network.
• This was part of a national scheme to encourage people to report incidents of this nature, to ensure better intelligence for operators to address unwanted sexual behaviour on the network if it became apparent.
• The short film would be made available to members towards the end of September.
Agreed:-That Northern Rail would share the film around encouraging reporting and raising awareness of unwanted sexual behaviour across the rail network to all members once it was available.