A strike by workers on South Western Railway is to go ahead tomorrow after talks failed to resolve a dispute over the role of guards.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union will walk out for 48 hours from Wednesday, causing disruption to services.

The union said it asked the company during a meeting to guarantee a safety critical guard on trains.

General secretary Mick Cash said in a message to members: "A meeting with South Western Railway management has now taken place, where we informed the company that the dispute could simply be resolved and called off if they gave the union assurances regarding the safety critical role of the guard.

"It will be guaranteed that the conductor will retain their full competency (rules, track safety, evacuation). "Currently, South Western Railway run almost 600,000 trains a year, every one of them has the guarantee of a guard on each train. That guard has a full set of competencies. The company's proposal was not to guarantee a guard on the train but only roster a guard and only guarantee minimum competencies to reflect that the guard would not carry out the full role as they do today.

"The company want to change that so that they can run their trains without a guard.

"When asked why they want to change the arrangements when there is nothing wrong with the current ones, they said it does not deliver the best customer outcome.

"They state that about 1,000 or 0.17% of the current trains do not run due to the non-availability of a guard.

"We do not know the figure for non-availability of drivers but we have said that we are prepared to sit down and discuss ways to ensure that guards are available to ensure trains are not cancelled."

Strikes will also be held at Southern, Greater Anglia, Merseyrail and Arriva Rail North in similar disputes.