Sutton Council has condemned plans to close ticket offices at four of the borough’s rail stations.

Cllr Jill Whitehead, chair of the authority’s environment neighbourhoods committee, has written to rail bosses to "strongly object" to proposals to shut offices at Sutton, Wallington, Carshalton and Carshalton Beeches.

Thameslink Govia Railway (GTR), which runs the stations and operates two south London rail franchises, launched a consultation last month on the closure of offices at 84 stations.

Under the plans, staff on station concourses will sell tickets from handheld machines instead.

RELATED: Rail companies planning ticket office closure 'carnage'

In a letter to the company, passed to the Sutton Guardian yesterday, Cllr Whitehead called for offices to remain open full-time at Sutton station, the sixth-busiest in south London.

Almost seven million passengers pass through Sutton station each year.

The council also wants Wallington and Carshalton, the borough’s second and third busiest stations, to remain open during peak hours.

Cllr Whitehead said: “The council strongly objects to the proposed closure of Sutton ticket office. 

“The council has major growth plans for Sutton, a metropolitan town centre, in terms of housing and employment which will result in a significant increase in station usage over the next decade.

"The council has also recently completed the Station Gateway scheme at Sutton, which made some significant improvements to area outside the station, as well as opening the side entrance.

“We consider it is important that this major London metropolitan town centre should retain a ticket office facility.

"There are certain ticket types and transactions that are not currently available from ticket machines, such as extensions to season tickets or freedom passes, railcards, purchasing Oyster and Key cards, the use of rail vouchers and the booking of complex longer-distance journeys.”

She added: “We note that there are no proposals for Hackbridge and Cheam stations, which are less busy than Carshalton and Wallington. Is this because they do not have ticket barriers?”

The council also criticised the length of the three-week consultation, which closed on Monday, as too short.

A GTR spokesman said: “Station hosts would be able to sell the full range of tickets at Sutton, Wallington and Carshalton, where ticket office machinery will be installed at a hosting point in the concourse.

"The hosts would be available for much longer than we have our ticket offices open today."

The company said station hosts would work 15 hours longer than ticket offices are currently open at Sutton station, as well as 20 hours longer at Wallington and 30 longer at Carshalton and Carshalton Beeches.

Rail union RMT this week denounced plans to close ticket offices as "plain stupidity".