Hendon’s Conservative MP Matthew Offord attempts to put a positive spin on Govia taking over the Thameslink line (‘Good news for local people’, Your Views, July 17), but it will be years before any difference is likely to be seen in the frequency and capacity of the service.

Govia are not going to review the timetable before 2018, so there is no prospect of any increased frequency before then.

It is correct that new trains will be introduced between 2016 to 2018, and they will hopefully be more reliable than the older trains. However, additional capacity on these trains may not mean that many more seats will be available from Mill Hill or Hendon. The claim made by Matthew Offord of extra seats is due to the move to 12-car from eight-car trains (once the new trains come into service), but these are for the whole of the Bedford line, so it depends how many seats are already taken by the time the trains get to Mill Hill.

Step-free access at Mill Hill is not in the franchise and Govia have no plans to install this. To do so, would be dependent on funding from ‘partners’. It is not in the Conservative-led Government’s new programme for step-free access announced in May this year, so it is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

Whilst there will be free Wi-Fi at Mill Hill and Hendon (presumably to use while you are waiting for a train to turn up); and there will be staff on the station, these ‘improvements’ hardly make up for the current problems of reliability and overcrowding, which commuters would far prefer to Wi-Fi.

Andrew Dismore

Labour parliamentary candidate for Hendon and London Assembly member