Ticket gates are planned for a busy Staffordshire railway station in a bid to crack down on county lines drug trafficking.

Government funding has been earmarked to install gates at Stafford, which would bring it into line with other railway stations such as Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton.

Avanti West Coast has operated Stafford Railway Station since December 2019, when it took over from Virgin Trains.

But Avanti West Coast services are set to be nationalised in March 2027, it was announced on Monday (28 September).

Mark Osborne, Regional Growth Manager at Avanti West Coast, which is part of the West Coast Partnership, told members of Staffordshire County Council's Economy, Infrastructure and Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Thursday (24 September) – just days before the Government announcement – that Avanti West Coast was one of the last three train operating companies that are still managed by the private sector.

It has been working with Network Rail, Stafford Borough Council and Staffordshire County Council on plans to transform the area around Stafford Railway Station.

He said: "We've been doing a lot with our partners in Staffordshire.

"We've secured funding from the DfT (Department for Transport) to put in automatic ticket gate lines at Stafford Station.

"A big supporting part of that is that Stafford Borough is able to provide us with evidence of the challenges of county lines drug use involving the station and that made our case to the DfT for putting the gate lines in stronger.

"It not only has a financial benefit to the railway, in terms of stopping ticketless travel, but also provided a way to stop issues around county line drug travelling.

"With the borough council, we were able to make the case to the Towns Fund to put investment outside the front of the station.

"This has provided a real welcome to Stafford, at what was quite a tired entrance point.

"Alongside the county, borough, West Midlands Rail Executive and Midlands Connect we have been able to do a number of studies around the future of the station, what improvements are needed and what's the scale of the rail market in Stafford.

"We know we can put on more services or help grow that connectivity the town wants.

"A big part of that is to support aspirations around new developments and new housing that is the Stafford Gateway and how we can make the station a real part of that proposal, including a potential second entrance into the station, providing more opportunity for people to access services, especially from the west of the town."

Cllrs were also told about the increase in rail services calling at the county town in recent years.

Mr Osborne said: "In 2019 there was one hourly service calling at Stafford station that came from Liverpool and went to London Euston and vice versa, while Tamworth and Lichfield Trent Valley had certain peak services going to or from London, depending on the morning or pm flows.

"Now Stafford has three hourly trains to and from London Euston; one of those goes to Manchester, another one goes up to Chester and some carry on to North Wales, and the hourly service from Birmingham now calls at Stafford, going on to Scotland.

"The number of destinations that can be reached from Stafford by our services has grown from five to over 20, giving more direct access to key places such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Preston, Warrington and Birmingham.

"Tamworth and Lichfield now have almost hourly services to and from London Euston.

"We've seen an increase in people since 2020 going to London Euston from Stafford, also quite substantial increases to Chester, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Glasgow Central.

"We're really seeing the value of having those services now calling at Stafford – it's providing more opportunities for people around Stafford to access these places by train.

"The new services at Lichfield and Tamworth are not taking passengers away from the existing service operated by London Northwestern.

"It's actually enabled both services to grow and provide more opportunity."

The meeting heard that "extreme weather" during the summer had affected services however.

Mr Osborne said: "We had to reduce speeds for some to maintain the infrastructure and we had an increased demand from customers support and we provided additional water supplies.

"We are working with Network Rail on ways to reduce our cancellations and delays.

"We have a delay attribution system which works out what delays are caused by which part of the railway and then breaks them down into specific causes.

"There's a specific caused depending what size of bird might hit the train and damage the windscreen.

"If it's larger than a chicken it's Network Rail's fault because it's a livestock issue and should have been kept off the tracks; if it's smaller it's a train operating company issue because it should have been within the windscreen design standards.

"Trespass is a big delay to our services and that's an external factor attributed to Network Rail.

"We have a joint strategy with Network Rail looking at these key issues to see which ones can bring us the most time savings to get us better performance on the West Coast Main Line.

"Some of this is adjusting the times trains leave London Euston by just a minute.

"That can help on its overall journey and how it impacts on other services it meets along its route where it has interactions at junctions."