Strikes planned by London Underground staff belonging to the RMT union in January are set to cause huge disruption in the capital next week.
Beginning on Sunday (7 January) services will stop early that evening, and little or no service across the entire Tube network from Monday to Thursday. Service is expected to resume late on Friday morning. Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union rejected a five percent pay offer at the end of 2023, with various departments that run the Underground striking on different days as part of a ‘rolling programme’ of industrial action.
Tube passengers have been advised by Transport for London (TfL) to “only travel if their journey is essential”.
UKHospitality Chief Executive, Kate Nicholls said: Yet another tube strike is frustrating news for Londoners, workers, and the thousands of hospitality businesses that operate in the Capital. With the strike days affecting Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week (9-11 January) – the key week days that commuters now come into the city – we estimate that the impact to the sector from next week’s tube strike could be up to £50 million.
And that figure is on top of the lost £4 billion in sales over the past 18 months that hospitality businesses have already had to absorb from ongoing transport strikes.
January is already one of the quieter trading months of the year for hospitality, where every sale counts, and this disruption will make the start to the year even more challenging. We need all parties to come together to urgently reach a resolution and bring to an end this long-running disruption.
