Press release -
Conductor sickness - cancellations to services
Cancellations to Southern services as a result of Conductor absence through sickness
As you may be aware, we are experiencing much higher than usual levels of Conductor absence through sickness – up to twice the normal rate overall. This has meant that over the last month, regrettably, we have had to cancel some of our services that require Conductors. The nature of the situation means that we only know what the levels of sickness are each day on the day, and have had to adjust the service accordingly. Cancelling trains on an ad-hoc basis like this doesn’t help you when you find out at very short notice that your train has been cancelled.
While we are still experiencing the sickness issue, we have decided to make things more predictable for you by pre-cancelling a small number of trains each day – the same trains each day so you know where you stand. The rationale behind this is that the trains we are pre-cancelling are what we call ‘self-contained’ and other trains services are not reliant on Conductors from these services working other trains. We believe this will reduce the number of cancellations we have to make each day.
These arrangements will remain in place while the current level of sickness absence continues.
We apologise for the inconvenience this will cause, but hope you understand this is being done to keep cancellations to a minimum in what is a very difficult time for us all.
These cancellations will continue to be counted under our performance contract.
