A SWINDON councillor who is a regular commuter has criticised his own party’s decision to increase railway fares by as much 3.2 per cent by January.

Dale Heenan, Covingham and Dorcan's Conservative councillor who travels by train from Bath to Swindon for work every day has said that the rise, determined by the RPI (Retail Price Index) inflation measure is out dated and unfair.

He said: “As a regular commuter, I think the fact that railway prices are rising in line with RPI instead of Consumer Price Index (CPI) is unfair.

“Many people have been campaigning and advocating for this for a long time, and there needs to be more consistency and it needs to be fairer across distances.

“The out of date RPI needs to be scrapped.”

Earlier this week, transport secretary Chris Grayling said future fare increases could be based on the generally lower Consumer Price Index measure of inflation, which is curently 2.5 per cent.

But he angered rail unions by saying t hat railway workers wage increases should also be pegged to the CPI.

The cost of most train fares are set by train companies themselves but 40 per cent of fares in England, Scotland and Wales are regulated so that they are only allowed to rise by an amount pegged to the RPI rate of inflation in July the previous year.

These regulated fares include annual season tickets which could add more than £100 to the price.

The government’s preferred measure of inflation, CPI rose to 2.5 per cent in July from 2.4 per cent in June.

Another commuter who travels regularly between Gloucestershire and Swindon by train is Richard parry.

The 49-year-old said: "I get the early morning trains between Swindon and Cheltenham or Gloucester every week, quite often every day.

"They're always quite empty but we pay a lot for the journey. It feels like we're an easy cash cow for the train companies."

Some however feel that using the RPI as a guide for the prices is fair. Tim Almond lives in Swindon and describes himself as a ‘free market headbanger’ on his Twitter account. He tweeted: “ That [RPI]also seems to be what is used to give staff pay increases. So that’s going to get passed on in fares."

A spokesman for Great Western Railways said the company was looking at what it will do in light of the announcement.

He said: "This announcement is about the government-regulated fares - so that';s what the increase will be.

"We haven't looked in detail at what we will do with the fares we set- some will go up, some will go down as is usual - but the average rise will be somewhere around the rise in the regulated fares."