Unfortunately, from Monday 6 September, there will be a reduction in the middle of the day to services to and from Uckfield. This is part of a wider change across the network and is enabling us to reintroduce school time services on other Southern routes, but I did want to be clear that from the Uckfield / Edenbridge Town perspective, it does unfortunately mean fewer trains on weekdays. There is no change on weekends or to services between Tonbridge and Redhill.

In terms of the specific change, as today, services from Uckfield will continue to be half-hourly between 06:30 and 07:30 to support the schools on the route. The service will then remain as hourly throughout most of the day, but will reduce to every two-hours in the middle of the day when trains are quieter in the following periods:

• Uckfield to London Bridge: 10:30-16:30
• London Bridge to Uckfield: 09:07-15:07 and 21:07-23:07

In terms of why this change is taking place, as you know on the 26 July, we reduced services across five Southern and Thameslink routes in response to the effect of coronavirus on our people. With the return of schools and colleges, we now need to ensure that all of our routes have their school trains running and this is why we are making the changes on the 6^th September and with it to our Uckfield to London Bridge services. We do have a significant long term impact from the eighteen months of coronavirus in terms of absence and delays to regular training, which will take our driver resourcing some time to recover from – although the change in advice to track and trace isolations is helping us to make progress. The new timetable will help us to ensure that our services are as reliable as possible with the train crew we have available.

In terms of the future, we will continue to monitor demand and will add additional services where needed, when crew availability improves to the point where we are confident it can be delivered consistently - our first priority being to return Uckfield’s services to hourly thoughout the entire day. I recognise this will be disappointing news and if you would like to discuss these changes in more detail, please do let us know.

Southern