Swanage Railway General Discussion

I believe the Post Office allow you to pay into Barclay's accounts via their over the counter service. I used to do this regularly for cheques, but I believe they also take cash.

 

This could be confusing terminology and thus the metrics.

10% of transactions by cash is unlikely to be 10% of turnover.

Cash transactions are much more likely to be for a postcard or other small value purchase in the shop or the buffet than a £20 return fare.

Only time will tell whether the loss of revenue by refusing cash payments is more or less than the costs saved.

I can quite imagine that ceasing to accept cash could save 1 FTE employee plus the banking and cash collection charges so say £40K per annum in total.

It may of course also reduce insurance costs.

 

But it hasn’t. As I understand it two members of staff were made redundant, catering and diesel.

 

Apologies I didnt make myself sufficiently clear. I meant that ceasing to accept cash could save the cost of 1 FTE plus banking and cash collection charges.

AIUI the time spent by those members of staff in the reservations / cash office to prepare and issue floats, check takings and prepare the banking etc etc is now time spent in the booking offices and carrying out other related duties.

Any actions which can streamline and simplify back office procedures either to save staffing costs or allow time to spent on more remunerative activities has to be a good thing.

 

There is a difference between what is provided for personal and business banking. Whilst it is true that deposits and withdrawals can be made at a Post Office this can only be done during office hours (which finish before the point where banking of daily takings is likely to be required, and isn't available at all on Sundays) - compared to the previous ability to use 'night-safes' to make deposits. In terms of obtaining change, I do not know the position in Swanage, but our local Post Office has a limit of £20 - not much use if you need to provide floats for multiple sales points...! The reality for businesses that need to run their transactions through a bank account (which should be all...) is that the provision of banking arrangements makes this very difficult to do in anything but very small amounts in locations where there is not a bank branch

I would suspect that among the businesses that prefer or only accept cash there are a number who do not pay all their takings into a bank, and among them there may be some who are not declaring all their income to HMRC...

This is not logically correct. It is the number of sales points that need to be serviced that takes up staff time (as each needs to be provided with floats which need checking reconciling and readjusting daily), not necessarily the volume of cash sales. Whilst low cash sales volumes would reduce the need to re-supply change during a day (as payments in notes depletes the stock of change), the overhead cost remains the same due to the necessity to issue, reconcile, adjust and bank monies even with low cash sales volumes. Add to that the increased overhead of not being able to bank locally at the end of each day, and the costs begin to rack up even though the cash volumes are declining.
Also, as stated, my knowledge was not based on last year - though I imagine that the situation is not significantly different even with reduced volumes of cash sales.

 

The walk away for diesel, or actually the walk away for any reason is very difficult to determine, unless you only record those who tried to by a ticket and then walked away "in disgust" and highlighted further by my day today proving that you do not know what you do not know.
So earlier in the week when GB Day 1 timings were out I thought 3 chances to photograph it around West London, and look at and photograph stations into Paddington since all rebuilt for the EL, worth the effort.
So I check the trains RRB between Bournemouth and Southampton so no inclination for that.
Second option National Express coach leaves Swanage around 07:30 and back about 22:30. £41.50 return because today is twice as expensive as other days, end of Easter or just a Saturday, no idea.
Third option of course was to drive, but these days hate driving and none to green for a few photographs at somewhere I should be able to get to easily by something that would run if I was there or not.
So bottom line SWR (the government really) got no railfare.
NE got no coach fare
One of the two petrol stations in Harmans Cross did not sell me £40 worth of petrol.
But of course none of those three will ever know, let alone know why it did not happen.
So it is good HR lines publish a timetable that shows diesel or steam, but how you monitor "walk aways" who never walked up in the first place? Absolutely no idea.

 

I absolutely second this - unless you've been involved in cash handling within an organisation, you will not realise what an utter pain it can be. It is fiddly, easy to make mistakes with, vulnerable to theft, and all of the above leave a disproportionately high risk of false accusations if something goes wrong. That's before you start to consider the questions that go with how you get supplies in, and takings out. From my experience of managing floats in a church, this means you need to be a weighlifter to receive money (do you have any idea how much a large quantity of coin weighs!) and ready to be a sprinter for paying it back in. You then need significant volumes of secure storage to keep it safe, and potentially to move it around.

Post Office do offer some cash handling through branches (especially Crown Post Offices) for business customers, but it's limited in amount and very insecure (would you fancy queuing at the Post Office with £10k in your bag?).

So for a coffee shop in Holborn, that might work. But for a heritage railway in an unbanked town, it'll be much more marginal.

I'm helping at an event next week. We'll have to go through all the rigmarole, whether we take £50 or £5000 - and to prepare on the basis that we'll take £5000.

So, before someone says "you ought to take cash", think about the cost to the organisation of doing so.

I agree with the problem statement, but not the solution. That solution rests on making it viable for businesses to take cash, recognising that it will increasingly be a marginal proportion of their business.

 

Things may have changed now, but I remember when the banks started closing all the branches here and the Post Office (offered or was told by government to take over, not sure which) that the payment from the banks was poor and the PO kept some themselves anyway that each banking transaction actually cost him money. Added to the fact it also annoyed those customer he might actually make some money from.

 

I’m all in favour of going cashless, but also for using the right arguments to support it not tautologies, and not justifying it by claiming savings that could, but haven’t actually, been made.

 

As someone who’s sat at home enjoying a cold tinny after not having to bugger about cashing up after an a rather busy day, I’ll say this, whether it’s cash or card transactions banks will try and and screw you on both.
Banks are an absolute shower of those born out of wedlock.

 

Let's try and be fair, someone has to pay for the banker's bonus. <BJ>

 

Given the amount of interest shown by members / volunteers / Swanage news in this decision I am sure that the outcome will be very carefully scrutinised.

Other final thoughts:
if this decision takes a paid member of staff out of the reservations office and enables them to be deployed to cover an otherwise uncovered TTI turn then it has the possibility of being income generative.

Will this mean that the number of paid passenger services staff (or paid passenger services hours) could eventually be reduced?

Will it make volunteering to staff a booking office turn more attractive than previously?

So often in many businesses savings projected do not materialise or decisions have unforeseen negative consequences. Lets us hope this decision is fully vindicated.

 

Correct, and not just Barclays but all high street banks.

 

Not really a railway issue as such but interesting to note that one of the railway's drivers who is standing as an Independent Candidate in the upcoming Swanage Town Council election uses a picture of himsef standing next to a pair of Class 20's.
That alone should be enough not to get my vote, 20's really

 

...do be careful what you wish for bringing HMRC into it, ....suppose I was the proprietor of that coffee shop in Holborn and I had enough 'extra money' to enjoy myself. Better not draw too much HMRC attention by driving a swanky car round London.... but "suppose the day dawned at 13 minutes to nine" on a little branch line by the sea and spending my anonymous cash riding backwards and forwards was pleasure "enough for my simple needs"..... Yes the cashless electronically monitored world will result in accurate tax collection by HMRC and full funding of things which get votes like NHS waiting lists, better funded schools. Government funding for steam railways to replace drop-off in spending of 'cash I found down the back of the sofa' will be way down the list...

 

...all good points, but not enough to convince me that defending the use of cash is not a stand worth making. I worked at a bank after leaving school. We had an account for a vending machine company which paid in at least a wheelie-bin's worth of loose change per week which had to be bagged and moved down to the safe, two sub-branches where I had a snatch alarm handcuffed to a bag containing £10,000, and travelled in bank taxis by specified random security routes, I've held £60,000 in my hands filling up cash machines, worked on the counters (and machine room processing cheques) where everything had to be balanced every day to the last penny.. so I do appreciate the work involved. Cash is robust, will not be the subject of a Russian/Chinese/Iranian/North Korean/Corporate megalomaniac - (take your pick) cyber attack. It's anonymous, my wife would prefer me to be in the gym, not swanning about on the SR so better hide my cashless bank statement! - you are right when you say the solution rests on making it viable for businesses to take cash, I understand (GM News - 10/04/24) that the Labour Party will force banks to provide banking hubs in towns that have no Banking facilities - lets hope that includes Swanage..

 

Possible the coffee shop in Holborn still has a bank branch with a night safe still open nearby (too many branches are closing)?
Also they may be getting more tourists using credit cards, rather than debit cards where the transaction charge for the merchant is higher?

So far the SR does not charge less for booking online in advance, which can be £4 per passenger at the MHR, but will probably come as it further reduces booking office effort.

 

I’m not sure pointing out the easier options for petty fraud is the best advertisement I’ve ever heard for retaining cash in society!

I doubt there is any visitor to a heritage railway now who is unable to pay by card. Unwilling is another issue, but I’m sure all will be able. I suspect one impact will be that the options to “drop a few coins into a collecting box” will diminish as fewer and fewer people carry cash. The slow burn restoration projects around railways will probably need to be rethinking their fundraising strategies if collecting boxes dry up.

Tom

 

I look after Gift Aid for my church. From that perspective, the move away from cash is having two effects. The first is that in many cases we're able to take more from visitors because they give more by card than they would have as cash. The other side is that we lose opportunities to take cash for casual donations (collection plate in particular).

The cost of SumUp/Zettle machines and the percentage of transactions is manageable. What's much harder is replacing a donations box with electronic giving - that becomes more expensive as though a card reader isn't dear, being able to have one available unsupervised is more of an effort - and a decent one is a few hundred quid.

 

Yes an interesting choice of photograph but at least it appears to be recent unlike photographs in other elections one could mention.

Swanage Railway Trust has IIRC two remote card readers built into "poster boards" to facilitate donations by card.