Because urgent repairs are required to a lift at Lancaster station, there will be no step-free access to platforms 4 and 5 at the station next week.

The lift has suffered several breakdowns recently, so Network Rail engineers will be carrying out repairs to make it more reliable. The work required to repair the lift is quite complex, so it will be necessary to take the lift out of service from Monday, 6 to Friday, 10 November.

The non-availability of the lift will affect passengers travelling on intercity services to London, Birmingham, Manchester and Preston, and some trains towards Morecambe, Barrow and Leeds.

As an alternative, passengers who were planning to depart from Lancaster can take advantage of travel to the nearest stations that have step-free access – Oxenholme for northbound journeys or Preston for southbound – but that travel must be booked in advance. That will also add extra time to journeys, and people should bear that in mind when planning their journeys, which can be done by visiting www.nationalrail.co.uk/

The current planned date for reopening of the lift to public use is Saturday, 11 November.

Kara Wood, Network Rail’s North West head of performance and customer relationship, said: “We know there’s never an ideal time to close a lift and we’re sorry to passengers who’ll be affected by these urgent repairs next week. We’re calling in specialist lift engineers to repair ongoing problems with the lift’s control panel so it’s much more reliable for passengers in future.

“Unfortunately, the complexity of the repair means we’ve no choice but to take the lift out of service for several days. I’d urge people needing step-free access to platforms 4 and 5 to contact their Passenger Assistance teams as soon as possible to make alternative arrangements during the repair work.”

Michael Byrne, Avanti West Coast station manager at Lancaster, said: “We’re working with Network Rail and industry partners to help customers as these works take place. As always, our teams will be on hand to help customers travelling to and from Lancaster during this time, but we strongly recommend customers plan ahead, check before they travel and leave extra time for their journey. We would like to thank customers for their patience while Network Rail undertake this work.”