Four Southern stations, a Traincare Depot and a Conductors’ Depot have picked up awards at the 2011 Southern ‘Stars and Tsars’ award ceremony.
Stars and Tsars celebrates the best in service quality within Southern and every year, an award ceremony is held to recognise team contributions to making every journey better for Southern’s passengers.
Awards are made by a panel of judges which comprises of Southern senior managers and directors, and Southern passengers who are members of the Southern Stakeholder Advisory Board.
The judges take into consideration results from Southern’s regular quality audits (called EQuIP) and levels of commitment from staff to recognise the best in class in terms of station and on train environment.
Shortlisted stations and depots were visited by the judges who toured the Southern network over a two-day period riding trains and arriving unannounced at stations, looking ‘through passengers’ eyes’ for things like cleanliness, availability of information and helpfulness of staff.
Accolades were won in the following categories:
- Best large station – Purley
- Best small/medium station – Bexhill
- Most improved station – Arundel
- Best community station – Plumpton
- Best Traincare depot – Littlehampton
- Best Conductors’ depot – Eastbourne (for the second year running)
Chris Burchell, Southern’s Managing Director said:
“These awards are not easily won. Only those who show consistent on-going dedication to providing excellent customer service and facilities and go the extra mile to make every journey better for our passengers are considered.
“I am particularly proud of our winners as they, like many of our individuals and teams have dug deep and gone above and beyond the call of duty to keep our passengers moving and informed when faced with some very challenging circumstances.”
The winning stations each received £1,000 to spend on something to benefit passengers. Stations and depots also received a cash prize to fund something to benefit the staff.
