Tube office closures 'leading to season ticket renewal delays'

Closing London Underground ticket offices has led to delays for rail travellers renewing their annual season tickets, Labour has claimed.

Commuters have been renewing their tickets online after the closures but many have reported problems, said Labour.

Val Shawcross, the party's London Assembly transport spokeswoman, said a number of people had contacted her with complaints such as being left on hold for 45 minutes while trying to contact Transport for London.

"By closing all of London's Tube ticket offices, Mayor Boris Johnson has made it much harder for people to renew their season tickets.

"Twitter has been awash with people complaining that the online renewal system doesn't work or that TfL's phone lines are perpetually blocked.

"It's clear TfL should have done far more to prepare and make this process far easier for customers," she said.

Shashi Verma, director of customer experience at Transport for London, said: "I'm sorry to hear that a very small number of passengers have experienced problems renewing their ticket.

"We've ensured that customers can renew in a variety of ways - through our website, at our Travel Information Centres or at any National Rail station. Around 20,000 annual season tickets have been purchased through our website since early December 2015.

"?Station staff have been redeployed to ticket halls, gates and platforms where they can help customers most effectively. As we've done this, we've closed ticket offices that were more and more under-used as customers increasingly choose to travel using Oyster or contactless payment.

"At the stations where we've made these changes, we are consistently seeing a noticeable increase in customer satisfaction."