LONDON Underground services are set to be disrupted for 48 hours from 21.00 tonight, in the continuing dispute over the proposed closure of the system's ticket offices.

Talks between the RMT union and London Underground management are continuing.

Transport for London says only about 3 per cent of journeys on its Underground trains now involve a visit to a ticket office, but the RMT has denied this figure. TfL intends to move some of the displaced staff to station concourses, where they will be available to help passengers use ticket machines and give them general travel advice.

The number of jobs said to be at risk has varied from time to time, but it is thought that at least 750 will go. The losses would have been closer to 1,000, but London Underground is also increasing the number of train operators it employs so that all-night services can begin at weekends on several tube lines in 2015.

It is reported that there have been more than 40 meetings between the union and LU management at Acas since the last strike, in February this year.

RMT acting general secretary Mick Cash said: “The talks aimed at resolving the dispute on London Underground over the savage cuts to jobs, services and safety have been cynically wrecked by a tube management who not only refused to budge an inch but who have chosen to up the ante by injecting further poisonous measures into a package that was already toxic to the core.

“Staff are furious that while senior management pay and staffing levels are being allowed to roar ahead, the jobs and pay of the station-based staff who are the interface with the travelling public are being torn to ribbons. The assurances that were given at the time RMT suspended the original action for a proper evaluation of the cuts plans have been ripped up and thrown back in our faces."

TfL said it was planning to run as many trains as possible. Some lines have operators who are not members of the RMT, and these are expected to report for duty as usual. However, some stations could be closed where RMT members form the staff.

London Underground said it had already promised that earlier plans to place up to five stations under the control of one supervisor had been scrapped. Instead, each station will have its own supervisor, and no stations would be left entirely unstaffed during traffic hours.

LU managing director Mike Brown has also said there would be no compulsory redundancies. As the strike loomed, he added: "What I really want is constructive, alternative, positive proposals from the RMT, not just saying 'no' to everything we offer. We've moved a huge amount since the last series of strikes. I'm really totally bemused as to why this disruption to London is still being continued. Obviously I'll try and do everything up to the eleventh hour."

Train operator c2c is running extra services between London and Laindon during the strike, but warned that its trains might not be able to call at West Ham, which is operated by London Underground.

The RMT has also issued an appeal to its members working in the South West Trains area not to work as 'volunteers'. Mick Cash told them: "I urge all RMT members to think carefully about volunteering or doing extra work during this action as it could undermine the industrial action being taken by your fellow members at LU."

A further 48-hour strike is currently planned to begin on 5 May.