NORTHERN has advised its customers across the north of England that services will be brought to a halt due to strike action.

The train operator has published a travel advice calendar for tomorrow (Friday, September, 29) to Tuesday, October, 3 to highlight when services will be affected during ASLEF strikes.

There will be no Northern services at all on Saturday when ASLEF members, most of whom are employed as train drivers, stage their latest walkout.

Additional disruption is expected from Monday to Friday, October 6, due to action short of the strike called by ASLEF and customers are advised to check before they travel as there may be some short-notice cancellations to services running on these days.

There will also be no services on Wednesday, October 4, when an additional strike has been called by the union.

Tricia Williams, chief operating officer at Northern, said: “We apologise in advance for the significant disruption and inconvenience this action by ASLEF will cause to our customers.

“We hope to see a resolution to this issue in the near future and an end to the disruption these strikes cause.”

Mick Whelan, ASLEF’s general secretary, said: "We don’t want to take this action but the train companies, and the government which stands behind them, have forced us into this place because they refuse to sit down and talk to us and have not made a fair and sensible pay offer to train drivers who have not had one for four years – since 2019 – while prices have soared in that time by more than 12 per cent.

"The government appears happy to let passengers – and businesses – suffer in the mistaken belief that they can bully us into submission. They don’t care about passengers – or Britain’s railway – but they will not break us.

"Train drivers at these companies have not had a pay rise for four years – since 2019 = while inflation has rocketed, We haven’t heard a word from the employers – we haven’t had a meeting, a phone call, a text message, or an email – since Wednesday, April 26, and we haven’t had any contact with the government since Friday, January 6. This shows the contempt in which the companies, and the government, hold passengers and staff and public transport in Britain.

!They are happy to let this drift on and on. But we are determined to get a fair pay rise for men and women who haven’t had one for four years while inflation has reached double figures. Our members, perfectly reasonably, want to be able to buy now what they could buy back in 2019."

For more information about the strike and the services that will be affected, you can visit: www.northernrailway.co.uk/travel/strikes.