North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Obviously the above was part of a bigger post but i did find it amusing that this has now appeared - https://www.nymr.co.uk/fishandchips

Genuinely though, I'm guessing this must have been in motion before my post to have happened so quickly. Its a slightly different offering to what I've seen other railways do but I hope they have some success with it to help keep customers coming in while limited to Goathland.

 

Another day, another timetable...

https://nymr.eu.prod.cw.npe.accessa...shx?IDMF=1fc4c5e0-b916-4bf5-a4b7-13e3de1f256e

 

Five published timetables before the first train has even run! That's got to be some kind of record!

 

Way OT in the NYMR thread I know, but here is the good Reverend re-christening? Stepney during a gala event at Sheffield Park in 1982

Peter

 

I make it six

I have V1.0, V1.1, V2, V2.1, V2.2 & now V2.3

Plenty time for more changes yet

Best regards

 

Meanwhile, TtTE apart, any news on the other small matter of THAT bridge?

 

I wonder how Gift Aid works on that? I went a fair way through booking a ticket to see and at one point it gave you the option to add a voluntary donation and said something about Gift Aid, but up to that point it hadn't given a Gift Aid consent form - it all felt a bit vague.

My working assumption is that it is probably not eligible, but would be interested to know how it is viewed within the NYMR.

Tom

 

That seems a very good price for a journey of that length.

 

I got through to putting my card details in and even then there was no mention about consenting to gift aid. The same if you try to book a two stop return on the yellow timetable. You can add donations but nothing about gift aid. Booking a full Pickering - Whitby ticket later in the year has a section below the booking to accept or decline gift aid.

The wise one told us repeatedly that gift aid was only available on full line Pickering to Whitby services to view the work of the charity, so only running half the length of the line probably means that it's not possible. Gift aid doesn't seem to apply to any short journey tickets, or other dining services.

£19.95 Pickering - Goathland return with a normal ticket, meaning fish and chips (and a cuppa) is an extra £25.

 

If you're making a donation of any kind though you ought to be able to claim gift aid on that, even if not the cost of the ticket.

 

Yes, but the promise of Gift Aid on tickets was that in exchange for a small (10%) donation, you could claim gift aid on the whole amount.

Which I think is problematic if part of the price includes a meal.

Tom

 

I read there as being confusion here. What people are writing of the user journey suggests that tickets are not being sold as Gift Aid tickets, but that purchasers are being invited to make additional donations, which would be eligible for Gift Aid.

My sense is that this reflects confusion (see many and protracted previous discussions on here!) about the boundaries between the different categories of payments. More importantly, because it is a basic compliance issue, I hope that NYMR are clear on which parts of a journey with meal provided are and are not VAT-rated supplies. The devil in me is tempted to purchase a ticket and then request a VAT receipt to see what might happen.

 

Anyone???

 

I think it's simply that their booking system is set up to accept donations on every ticket, but only accept gift aid if someone buys a full line ticket. There's no option to simply add GA to the donation on its own. Surely that shouldn't be too hard to incorporate to the booking system?

We were told repeatedly that gift aid was only applicable if a customer bought a full line ticket and that shorter journeys weren't valid for gift aid. However, for at least the first month of services, only half of the site is open. Surely then gift aid should be possible on Pickering - Goathland tickets? If you go to a National Trust property or an English Heritage site and a substantial part of it is inaccessible, you pay a reduced entry fee and they can still claim gift aid on it. Why not the NYMR? It's a preplanned reduction in service, not a last minute emergency closure.



Osterley Park house and gardens. Different prices depending on if the full site is open or just the gardens. I can't see why the NYMR isn't gift aiding tickets for Pickering - Goathland when that's all that's available. Again, begging for donations but not maximising other income is bonkers. A ticket for £19.95 would be worth nearly £25 to the railway. Potentially hundreds, if not thousands of pounds extra income per day for the sake of one tick box on a website.

 

I tend to agree. All of which suggests an issue with how individual products are set up on the NYMR booking engine which, sadly, seems symptomatic of the logical confusions we've seen before

 

It'll be a question of scale. English Heritage or the National Trust will have one software package that they are using over hundreds of sites all with different charges, so if you have one site which temporarily changes its charges it will be a a simple change to change that amount and still provide the necessary digital audit trail to hmrc.
For heritage railways there is not one universal software package used between sites, not all sites are part of charities and not all activities are eligable to recover gift aid.
Ive no idea what ticketing system the NYMR use but down here in the Southeast the majority of railways use a system which is adapted from a museum and theatre booking sytem.
In our case thats adapted to several business models one of which is the normal everyday visitor which equate to basic railway service. Again In our case 95% of these tickets are day rovers originating at one station. The gift aid claim is a manual adjustment on the system which is one of our business models on a system which is adopted from a museum booking system. The huge advantage is that this is simple and cheap to administer. The disadvantage is that we dont retrieve gift aid on for instance a Rolvenden to Wittersham Rd single. This is because the administrative cost would out weight the benefit of the extra gift aid. I suspect the NYMRs passengers are spread more evenly across their sites but that the same principle applies. Even when you have a dramatic change like the bridge if its only for a month of so it may not be worthwhile changing the system for a short period and getting HMRC approval for that change which you need for their audit process.

 

The point about software is well made, but I'm not at all convinced about the question of change.

HMRC don't mandate which software is used, or even particularly pay attention. What they require is that the body taking the donation keeps records of the Gift Aid declarations, which they can then audit if they so choose.

From a system design perspective, what surprises me given the popularity of Gift Aid admission at visitor attractions (including museums) is that the workflow doesn't flag individual products as potentially eligible for Gift Aid, and then prompt whether to make a declaration where a potentially eligible product is purchased.

As a Gift Aid administrator, recording donations on a database, I have two factors to manage:
1. Whether the donor has a Gift Aid declaration
2. Whether the individual donation is Gift Aided

There are subsequent detail choices, but that fundamental is really straightforward - and the online donation portals we benefit from follow suit.