Abellio to spend £10 million on Greater Anglia

Interior refreshes of two electric multiple unit fleets, upgrading ticket gates and staff recruitment are among the improvement plans launched by Abellio Greater Anglia.

The upgrades are in addition to the £20 million programme of enhancements announced earlier this year as part of the company’s new short franchise to October 2016. 
There will be a refresh for the 24 Class 317/6s, with new seat covers and re-painting of the carriage interiors (including grab handles and luggage racks), while there will also be new seat covers for the 21 Class 360s.

Automatic ticket gates at London Liverpool Street, Shenfield, Southend Victoria, Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich and Harlow will be replaced with more efficient gates - this will also enable the introduction of more mobile ticketing, print-at-home ticketing and future smart-ticketing schemes.

Forty additional cleaning staff will be recruited, including eight‘roving’, on-train cleaners to work mainly on Southend and Clacton trains.

There will also be ten extra customer service staff at stations including London Liverpool Street, Billericay, Wickford, Chelmsford, Clacton, Norwich and Cambridge (to provide additional customer assistance and information), and six additional staff at Ilford and Norwich (to repair train interior faults, such as damage to or problems with seats, tables, toilets, lighting or wall panels).

And there will be six additional catering staff for the trial of an at-seat catering service in First Class carriages on three morning and evening peak trains in each direction on the Norwich to London trains.

• For more on this story, see RAIL 7863, published December 10.