Rail strike announced over Latitude Festival weekend
A rail strike could impact travellers to the Latitude Festival on July 23 if the planned strike goes ahead - Credit: Archant
Travellers to Latitude Festival could be forced to rethink plans after Greater Anglia warned of another planned day of strikes.
Dozens of services are set for cancellation if a strike by members of train drivers’ union ASLEF goes ahead on Saturday, July 23.
That date would coincide with the first weekend of the school holidays and the weekend of one of the region's biggest music festivals.
A timetable of services has not yet been announced – but a "severely reduced service" has been in operation during previous strikes.
During the previous ASLEF strike on Saturday, July 2, more than 90pc of Greater Anglia services were unable to run.
The Norwich to London Liverpool Street Intercity service, which stops in Ipswich, ran six trains in each direction across the whole day.
There were severely reduced services between Norwich, Colchester, Southend Victoria and Stansted Airport and London Liverpool Street, with far fewer trains than usual.
However, East Midlands Railway services are still running as usual from Norwich station.
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Jamie Burles, Greater Anglia's managing director, said he hoped the strike action could be resolved but wanted to give customers as much notice as possible.
He said: “We hope this dispute can be resolved and the strike action proposed for July 23 cancelled, but in the meantime we want to give our customers as much notice as possible that there will be disruption if the strike does go ahead.
“We are making arrangements and drawing up timetables in case the action does take place, and we will keep our customers updated.
“If there is a strike, our advice to customers will be to avoid travelling on our trains. With drivers on strike, we can only run minimal services and just on limited routes and between limited hours too for most of those routes.
“We are aware that many customers will have plans to travel – it’s the first weekend of the school holidays and the weekend of the Latitude Festival.
"We’re genuinely sorry if this strike disrupts people’s plans.”
Full information including timetables, how to refund or change tickets and first and last train times will be available on the Greater Anglia website when it becomes available.