A leaked document from British private rail companies has confirmed that the National Rail Inquiries Service is shifting to India as part of the call centres relocation process.

By next summer all inquiries about British train services, including travel to places with improbable and difficult sounding names, will be handled from Mumbai and Bangalore.

National rail inquiries are currently sub-contracted to three UK-based companies: BT, Serco and FirstInfo.

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But the National Rail Inquiries Service board has now decided to award the contract to two other companies: Ventura and BT Client Logic.

A leaked document from the Association of Train Operating Companies confirms that Ventura will run half the rail inquiries service from next February.

Calls will be answered initially in the northern UK city of Leeds before they are switched to Mumbai.

BT Client Logic, which has been offered the other half of the rail inquiries contract, has been running a pilot call centre scheme in Bangalore and is expected to switch much of its new business there once the rail inquiries contract has been activated.

The leaked memorandum from ATOC director general George Muir reads: "The National Rail Enquiries Service board decided to appoint two suppliers, BT Client Logic and a new supplier, Ventura.

"They decided to appoint Ventura immediately but conducted further negotiations with BT before confirming their award. Ventura are ramping up operations in Yorkshire. When those operations are stable, they will move the operation to India over the summer of 2004."

Moving the National Rail Inquiries Service to India was reported by rediff.com last October.

At the time Amicus, the UK's largest professional trades union, warned of the poor quality of the existing service and predicted that it could only get worse if call centres were relocated abroad.

This time it is the turn of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) union which has asked the British transport secretary Alastair Darling to stop the 'export' of British jobs abroad.

"We would call on Alastair Darling to step in," said TSSA spokesman Richard Rosser.

"He should review if this is a suitable way to spend the taxpayers' money and whether it really does give value for money."

"Who is going to fund the unemployment benefit which these exported jobs will lead to ?"