I was stuck in travel chaos in Manchester again yesterday evening and ended up at Victoria, unaware of what had caused the delays on arrival. (It was described as being 'operational reasons')
So first things first, I completely support the staff in retreating from the front line as a result of passenger actions and I hope that those who caused this are dealt with appropriately. I did notice travel safe officers on the platforms and assumed it was due to the overcrowding, but now I understand why.
As others have mentioned, at Victoria in particular it appears to be a perfect storm at the moment. Christmas crowds have changed the passenger mix, with more families and party-goers (i.e. booze influenced) travelling, along with the regular commuter crowd. There have been issues with Piccadilly platform 13/14 services having a rough time on some evenings, which adds more volume over to Victoria and then there have been the many and frequent issues at Victoria itself.
Twice this week I've been delayed on my regular commute (to Leyland) by over 3 hours thanks to cancellations on the Castlefield corridor services. Northern control have been consistent in refusing to put on additional stops at the couple of stations not served on the remaining Preston services and passengers are sent over to Victoria. On Monday myself and other passengers were bounced from Oxford Road to Victoria to Oxford Road and back to Victoria based on service availability and staff feedback. Yesterday evening I was sent from Oxford Road to Victoria, despite Victoria not running trains. (Which was the situation when I was sent over). I've taken it in my stride this week, but I fully understand why some passengers find this extremely frustrating as Northern staff are receiving no support or direction from Northern control (according to my conversations with staff) and are effectively moving problems along, which I believe is in good faith.
At Victoria this week we've had blocked platforms, information being incorrect on the displays or in the case of yesterday evening, no displays and no announcements to replace these. With virtually all services delayed or cancelled yesterday evening, it meant that passengers had no clue what was going on and were typically going to where they were directed to and left to wait. Trains then arrived and nobody knew where they were going to (if anywhere) or in some cases arrived, passengers told to board only to discover the service was being cancelled due to a lack of staff. Despatchers were not receiving information and passengers were the ones telling them what was going on at times. For example I was waiting for the heavily delayed 19:05 to Preston which everyone was waiting for on Platform 5. A 319 came in on 6 minus a destination showing). I pointed it out to the staff on 5 who told me it wasn't for Blackpool. I asked them to double check as I had been tracking the inbound service. Fortunately they did this and it was indeed the Blackpool service. With no announcements, staff were having to shout up the platform to ask people to head to 6.
At platform 6 it was chaotic with a group of passengers waiting for a Stalybridge service blocking platform access to anything beyond the last set of doors on the 319. A member of staff did have a small loudspeaker and was trying to inform people that it was for Blackpool and not Stalybridge. For that they were receiving a lot of questions and grumbles as no information about the Stalybridge service could be provide. Unlike on Monday when the same heavily delayed service was set to run non-step to Preston, at least the service yesterday ran as planned all stations.
The past few months in particular has seen a real decline in services, with regular cancellations on both Castlefield and Victoria services. The issue is that when these services are cancelled, there is no flexibility or customer focus to help mitigate. Additional calls are never added and Northern control consider it perfectly acceptable to allow gaps of 3 hours without any additional calls or alternative transport. Staff have very little information on the ground and often make poor calls on advising passengers due to the lack of information. Victoria gets overcrowded on the platforms and the lack of passenger facilities make it a pretty dismal experience at the best of times, let alone during more extreme service issues like this week.
The lack of information, process and management support on the ground are creating an environment where staff being set up to fail and are being put in the line of fire, which increasingly is becoming volatile. Staff are being let down by Northern management and are taking on the brunt of passenger frustrations. I don't see the service challenges improving too quickly, so the staff will need the security support in the short term. It really shouldn't be this way.