Outrage as "horrendous" train timetable changes will see services to villages near Worksop cut in half

East Midlands Railway has proposed a change to off-peak calling patterns on the Robin Hood Line which are to be put into effect from Sunday, May 15.

The changes on the line, which services between Worksop and Nottingham, will see half of calls at Langwith-Whaley Thorns and Whitwell stopped.

EMR said it has been working to identify long term issues which have affected the punctuality of the Robin Hood Line, and found that “the most robust option to improve performance in the short term” involved alternate hourly omission of calls at Langwith-Whaley Thorns and Whitwell, due to “the lowest customer demand.”

Nether-Langwith residents said the cut will see people struggle to get to and from work and school and cause difficulty to people who do not have a car, and also encourage more car use.

One local resident said her biggest concern is women’s safety.

She said: “Recent events with Sarah Everard and the Irish primary school teacher recently murdered shows that women are not safe.

“By cutting this service, EMR are making it more difficult for women to get to a place of safety in and out of Langwith and Whitwell safely and quickly.”

Another resident, who has a child at Nottingham College, said: “What happens when there is no train to get there or to come home at night? She’s 16.”

Chairman of Nether-Langwith Parish Council, councillor Matthew Evans said he was “deeply disappointed” that the “horrendous proposals” were going ahead.

“This decision will isolate our most vulnerable residents, and further reduce our elderly residents' access to vital NHS treatment which is otherwise unavailable within our local community,” he said.

“I fully intend on fighting for a reversal of this decision and working with our local Members of Parliament to ensure that the promises of levelling-up for communities such as ours.”

EMR announced the proposed changes on December 23 and asked for feedback by January 14 ahead of the final decision.

Feedback was considered by EMR and the Department for Transport.

In a letter from Paul Barnfield, operations director EMR, said: “After careful consideration of the feedback received, alongside a deeper understanding of the challenges of operating a reliable and punctual service on the Robin Hood Line, the changes to services at Whitewell and Langwith-Whaley Thorns will be introduced, as outlined, from May this year.

“We understand this will come as a disappointment, but we believe it is in the best interests of the line as a whole - particularly with our new-term aspiration to return to two trains per hour on the Robin Hood Line throughout the day in mind.

“It will also provide a level of service which is commensurate with the level of demand at the two stations while continuing to be mindful of the costs of operating a railway with demand well below the levels seen pre-Covid.

“We will now focus our efforts on working with our partners at Network Rail to find solutions to the long-standing infrastructure challenges we face on this route that will allow us to restore the capability necessary to return to a full service calling at all stations along the route.”