We're trying to persuade London Midland to pASSENGERS LOCKED OUT OF LICHFIELD CITY STATION / RESOLVE THE PROBLEM

Here is the letter that John Woodcock wrote.

LICHFIELD CITY STATION LOCKED 23rd December 2011

The station staff did not arrive to open the station on the morning of Friday 23rd Dec 2011 untill approx 0650hrs which is almost 1 hour late, which meant we could not get on the platform to catch the 0612hrs to Birmingham or any of the following trains until 0713hrs .
Can London Midland explain why the fall back plan where a person comes from another station to unlock failed?
A possible solution would be to have timed electric locks which would release the doors and not rely on a human intervention, as this is not the 1st time this has happened, and until things change will proberly not be the last. The News Agent at the Station also lost an hours trading
Regards
John Woodcock

Hello John. FixMyTransport volunteer here Is there a reason for it taking over a month for you to report this?

I only thought about using this forum after having an E-Mail reminding me that this is what its all about
I am a user of "Fix my street"
Regards
John

You suggest that this has happened on other occasions, and it poses a further issue - what if passengers want to get off those trains at Lichfield City? Are they expected to Lichfield TV and hike back?

Dave, its worse than that when the passengers get off at Lichfield City, they would not be aware that the station is locked so when they come down off the platform they would be met with a locked "Wicket " type gate and they are unable to exit the station. they would of course be able to see us waiting outside the locked main doors

Have you sent a note to Centro (Network WM or whatever they are now called), as this is part of their network and they presumably contribute to the staffing costs of stations?

Might be worth tweeting @LondonMidland as they have a well praised twitter service but things like stations failing to open should be flashed to passengers through their generally good real time system. This is clearly a weak-link in the system somewhere.

I wonder if their operating side (often a bit too remote from customer services) would have a clocking in report for booking offices, which should then trigger an alert to passengers that a station was not open.

Dave
Lichfield City is not within the Centro area, 2 stations outside as we are in staffordshire, I'm not into this tweeting thing so would not no where to start and I do not think my old phone is upto it. The station staff are supposed to phone their control as soon as they arrive and open the station, that is my concern, the system totaly failed as the Station did not get unlocked until the member of staff arrived ,be it an hour late but the system did not work where a member of staff from lichfield Trent Valley did not arrive to open, but of course, the member of staff at the other station may have been late as well , does any one know if it was London Midland's Christmas do the night before

I will tweet @londonmidland on your behalf.

Best Wishes,

Martin Heron

I have had no response at all, I think my complaint has been conveniently lost, perhaps some one does not want to be truthfull about the events of the morning

Dear Mr Woodcock

Thank you for your e-mail.

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Due to some severe disruption on the rail network during November, we are currently dealing with an unprecedented amount of correspondence, which we are attempting to answer as quickly as possible. I am sorry it has taken this long.

I am extremely sorry for the inconvenience you experience due to the late opening of Lichfield City station. I have spoken to the delivery manager for the station and unfortunately there was a staffing issue on the morning of the 23 December 2011. The usual process if this occurs, as you are already aware, is that a member of staff from Lichfield Trent Valley would take a spare key and drive to open the station. Unfortunately, on this occasion this didn’t happen in time, which I can only apologise for.

I also acknowledge the importance of communication with passengers when such disruptions arise. I apologise that we have not kept you better informed. It is an aspect of our service which we are working hard to improve.

The manager is aware of the situation and this matter is being dealt with internally to ensure that this isn’t an issue in the future. Unfortunately, I am unable to supply you with an email address for the Cross City manager; however, I am willing to pass any correspondence on to them for you.

I hope you can accept my apologies for problems you incurred that day and I hope you don’t experience anything similar in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Carl A Knight
Customer Relations Advisor

My goodness, that really was a long delay in responding - five months!