My nearest LU station is Upney on the District.

Sometimes the gates are left open.

Sometimes the gates are operational.

The gateline is never directly supervised, though there is always someone in
the ticket office, from where there is a good view of the gateline - and of
course the whole place is covered by CCTV.

Here is my point. The *side* gate for those with luggage/the
disabled/cyclists is *always* left unlocked, whatever the time of day or day
of the week. As a result, everyone has got to know of this, and uses this
gate to save retrieving their ticket from their pocket/handbag. No doubt
those who wish to travel fraudulently know about this too.

I had always assumed that if the automatic gates were in operation, the side
gate should default to the locked position to 'complete the set' - and vice
versa. If it is the policy of LU to leave the side gates unlocked around the
clock, what on earth was the business case for investing in gates at
outlying stations? If, however, there are rogue staff members who leave the
side gate open for the sake of an easy life (and I do sympathise with them,
given the levels of aggression in society today), why haven't LU discovered
this yet?

Chris