Half of UK's rail enquiries calls to be offshored to India

Up to half of the UK's national rail enquiries calls will now be handled from India as part of a new £100m contract to be run by BT and Ventura.

The rail enquiries call centre contract has been split equally between BT and Ventura in two five-year deals with the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) starting from 1 April.

The service's annual 50 million calls are currently handled at centres in Newcastle, Plymouth, Derby and Cardiff, but both BT and Ventura will now offshore some of the work.

Ventura will use 500 staff with 300 based in the Dearne Valley, South Yorkshire, and 200 based in Mumbai, India. BT will continue to employ around 500 people and said it was too early to say what the split would be between Newcastle, Derby and Bangalore in India, although "hundreds" will remain in the UK.

A BT spokesman told silicon.com that due to the high turnover of call centre staff most of the positions moved to India would be down to natural wastage and staff turnover rather than redundancies. He also said that if BT had not included an offshore element to bring the cost of its bid down then it would probably have lost the contract and all 500 positions with it.

"The plan is to minimise disruption by moving the work as people leave of their own accord, but a substantial amount of the work will remain in the UK," he said.

The new contracts cover the answering of telephone enquiries about train times and journey planning as well as handling email feedback from the National Rail website and the Welsh-language enquiries service.

Chris Scoggins, CEO of National Rail Enquiries, said the tendering process had been "exhaustive" and "thorough" and complied with European Union procurement rules.

The new contracts will also see a reduction in the numbers of people handling rail enquiries calls. There are currently 1,400 staff – which ATOC said equates to 1,200 full-time positions – whereas the new operators will be employing just 1,000 people.

An ATOC spokeswoman told silicon.com that the reduction in number of people needed was because of the falling numbers of enquiries to the telephone service and greater use of the internet service, which is run in-house by ATOC.

"The number of calls has gone down and 40 per cent of enquiries are now handled on the internet," she said.

Unions protested back in November that rail operators had a "moral obligation" to British taxpayers to keep the rail enquiries service in the UK.