Waive charges for motorists during strikes, says AA chief
Headteachers and officials draw up plans to ensure students will still be able to sit GCSES and A-levels
DRIVERS should be spared road charges during next week’s rail strikes to prevent cities turning into “ghost towns”, the president of the AA motoring association has said.
The UK’S biggest strikes in 30 years are expected to cut off entire towns and cities as they shut down 80 per cent of Britain’s rail services.
Parking charges, congestion and clean air zones, as well as unnecessary road works, should be halted to ease the burden of thousands who will be forced to drive to work, the AA’S Edmund King said.
Up to 50,000 workers will walk out in a dispute over pay and jobs on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday next week, disrupting hospitals, schools and food deliveries.
Rail workers were warned yesterday not to “risk striking yourselves out of a job” by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary. He said the strikes risked alienating members of the public who may abandon train travel in the future.
“[The railway] is not only competing against other forms of public and private transport. It’s in a battle with Zoom, Teams and remote working,” said Mr Shapps.
The Government plans to bring in legislation to enable the use of agency workers on the railways during industrial action “if the strike drags on”, Mr Shapps added.
Commuters forced into their cars face the extra burden of record high fuel prices, which have pushed the cost of a full tank of petrol to more than £100.
In areas where there are no trains at all, including parts of Cornwall, Dorset, Scotland and Wales, Mr King said it should be made free to park.
“If there are no trains coming into Glasgow and Edinburgh, say, and people have to go about their business, there could be a case for suspending parking charges for the duration of the strike,” he said. “Otherwise there is the danger of some areas becoming ghost towns.”
Mr King compared the action to the strikes during the 1970s and 1980s, when parts of Hyde Park and The Mall in London were given over to car parking.
The AA president said it also made sense to suspend clean air zones such as London’s Ulez which extends to the North and South Circular roads, as well as congestion charging.
“Only people who absolutely have to get to work will use the roads,” he said. “More people will work from home and fuel prices will put off some anyway.”
“Those factors will mitigate some of the extra congestion but there still will be shift workers, and low-paid NHS workers for whom going by car and cycling will be the only options.”
While mainlines are expected to prioritise passenger trains, last services will leave in the mid-afternoon, affecting all those who travel after 7pm.
Mr King said local authorities should also consider bringing in temporary park-and-ride facilities using “fields or derelict factories on the outskirts of towns” to avoid encouraging thousands of commuters to drive into city centres.
Non-essential roadworks, such as maintenance work by utility companies, should also be suspended, he said.
The strike action will have a knockon effect on train services across the rest of the week and could affect major events, including Glastonbury Festival.
THE UK’S largest headteacher union has said it is “concerned” about the impact on pupils’ exams from the forthcoming rail strike.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) voiced its misgivings about the effect the industrial action is likely to have on students taking their GCSE and A-levels next week.
Huge swathes of Britain will be without any rail services on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, when 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT) go on strike in a dispute over pay and jobs.
Seventeen GCSE and 22 A-level exams are scheduled to take place on Tuesday and Thursday next week, including maths, science and history, which are sat by hundreds of thousands of pupils.
Julie Mcculloch, ASCL’S director of policy, said she is concerned about the potential impact of the strikes on exam students who depend on trains to get to school.
“It is important that families are conscious of the industrial action and make alternative arrangements where students are reliant on train services,” she said. “We would urge anybody who is concerned about their ability to attend an exam to talk to their school or college at the earliest opportunity to discuss the options that are available.”
The National Education Union (NEU), which represents rank-and-file teachers, refused to condemn the strikes.
Kevin Courtney, the union’s joint general secretary, declared his “solidarity” with the RMT when they announced they had a mandate for industrial action.
On May 25 – which was before the dates of the strike had been made public – he tweeted: “Working people need pay rises and are right to fight for them.”
Schools may need to move pupils to alternative premises to ensure exams can take place next week. Headteachers have been told that A-levels and GCSES should go ahead even if this means “relocating” to another venue, according to the Government’s contingency planning document.
Exam board chiefs have written to all head teachers in the country to advise on how to manage disruption caused by the rail strikes.
The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), the umbrella body which represents the UK’S largest exam boards, has told schools that they can start exams up to half-an-hour late without having to seek permission from the board.
The JCQ has also sent schools the Government’s official contingency planning document which explains that exams should go ahead unless they have been told otherwise by the relevant exam board.
“You should make sure that any exam or timetabled assessment takes
‘Schools may need to relocate exams to alternative premises’
place if it is possible to hold it,” the document says. “This may mean relocating to alternative premises.”
The guidance also notes that in the event of disruption and if there is a limit to how many exams can take place on any one day, students “whose progression will be severely delayed” by missing an exam should be prioritised. In practice, this is likely to mean that A-level exams are prioritised over GCSES, since students’ university places depend on the former.
Meanwhile, officials at the Department for Education have drawn up further guidance for schools on how to keep going during the rail strikes.
Whitehall officials have warned headteachers against cancelling GCSE and A-level exams, saying that “every effort” should be made to make sure they go ahead.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, has warned that the rail strikes should not be used as an excuse by schools to “default” to remote learning.
He has urged schools to deliver “faceto-face learning” where possible and said it would be a “crying shame” if rail unions prevented the sitting of exams.