Transpennine Express boss apologises for poor services

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

You might recognise the name of the boss in this article. Bet he wished he'd stayed in this area!

[From The BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

The boss of under-fire train company Transpennine Express has apologised to passengers and admitted services have not been good enough.

Transpennine, which operates across the North of England and into Scotland, has been cancelling trains on a daily basis for months, disrupting many journeys.

Calls have been made for the company to lose its contract for the service.

Matthew Golton, managing director of Transpennine, told the BBC the operator had a "recovery plan" to do better.

The government has previously said action will be taken if the company "can't be turned round".

Asked about Transpennine cancelling 40% of its services last week, Mr Golton said: "It isn't good enough.

"I apologise. We know that this business is really important to the North of England [and] Scotland. We know that we've got to do a good job and we really care about when we let people down."

Passengers across the country have experienced disruption and cancellations to train journeys in recent months due to strikes by workers over pay and conditions.

But services have also been axed outside of industrial action with train cancellation rates in Britain hitting a fresh record. Transpennine has blamed its cancellations on high sickness rates and a backlog of driver training caused by the Covid pandemic, as well as drivers not working overtime.

Mr Golton said that during the height of the pandemic the company "couldn't train the way that we needed to".

"We've had high levels of sickness, but critically in December 2021, we lost the benefit of overtime working by our drivers."

Transpennine and union Aslef had an agreement for train drivers to work on rest days but that ended in 2021 and a new one has not yet been agreed. Union representatives have argued a new offer was lower than the previous deal.

Mr Golton said having no overtime agreement meant it was "more difficult to get through the rate of training that we want to and that's been a key issue for us".

But Mick Whelan, the Aslef general-secretary, hit back and said the company had had 12 months to train new drivers.

The union boss rejected the notion that drivers should hold any blame and claimed members were being asked to work rest days for reasons they shouldn't be.

"What we have is a company that should no longer have its franchise, that is inept and operates in bad faith, and then wants people to dig them out of the hole they have created for themselves," he said.

"They have more than enough capacity to do whatever training they are required [to do] and should not be relying upon people working on their quality time off."

Mr Golton denied the company had failed to recruit enough drivers and said Transpennine had 200 more drivers than it had five years ago. "We've not got a shortage of drivers," he said.

After last week's cancellations, Mr Golton said this week had "been better" so far, with the number of cancelled services down 20%.

But the company is still under pressure.

When rail franchises fail in England, they are taken over by a Department for Transport-owned company called the Operator of Last Resort (OLR).

Rail Minister Huw Merriman has previously said that if Transpennine "can't be turned round then decisions will be made".

Labour's Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin said on Thursday that Transpennine's contract "must not be renewed" by the government in May.

"Enough is enough - the time for excuses has passed. We have lost trust in their ability to improve," she said.

Asked if Transpennine should keep its contract, Mr Golton said: "We care very much about delivering this contract and doing it well.

"Up until the autumn of 2021, we were having the best service levels of performance that we've ever had as a business."

Northern, Southeastern, and London and North Eastern Railway (LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about)) are currently run by the OLR.

The government also recently gave another troubled operator, Avanti West Coast, six months to urgently improve.

If it goes OLR, do you think he'll get his old job back?

[ChrisB]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

Transpennine: True extent of cancellations revealed

The true extent of cancellations made by the Transpennine Express rail franchise has been revealed in figures published by the rail regulator.

In a four-week period the company cancelled 1,048 trains before 22:30 GMT on the day before they were due to run, and part of the route on a further 312.

Because the announcements were not made on the day, these cancellations were not included in official statistics.

Transpennine has said such decisions were "not taken lightly".

Usually these pre-planned cancellations - also called P-coding advance cancellations - are used when an emergency timetable is needed in response to poor weather or damage to rail infrastructure.

However, in each case the Transpennine trains, which operate across the North of England and into Scotland, were cancelled due to a shortage of available train crew.

The number of cancellations it made in this way far outstripped any other rail operator in the four weeks to 4 February. For example, government-owned Northern recorded 182 full cancellations, Transport for Wales 30 and LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) 17 - all attributed to staff shortages.

Releasing the figures the Office of Road and Rail (ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)) regulator said Transpennine's cancellations score for that period jumps from an official 8.9% to 23.7% when P-coding was taken into account.

Transpennine has previously said it only resorted to pre-planned cancellations "when resources are not available to cover advertised services in order to maximise advance notice of service changes for customers".

It blamed the "combined impact of prolonged higher-than-usual sickness levels, the significant driver training programme to facilitate the delivery of the Transpennine route upgrade and an aligned lack of a driver overtime agreement"

"[This has] led to the need to remove services from the timetable on a day-by-day basis through pre-planned cancellations."

However, the practice has come under fire from the ORR which published these figures for the first time on Friday.

In January the regulator said cancellations were at "record levels" and its investigation had "confirmed a further gap between cancellations statistics and the passenger experience".

It said this was "driven by an increased number of unrecorded 'pre-cancellations'".

"For a passenger this could mean that a train they expected to catch when they went to bed can disappear from the timetable by the time they leave for the station unaware that the train has been cancelled."

Labour and some Conservative MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament) have called for Transpennine's contract, which expires on 28 May, to be withdrawn.

Last month Labour's shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said the service had "never been worse".

Anthony Smith, chief executive of the independent watchdog Transport Focus, said passengers were left "confused and frustrated" when a train they expected to catch was cancelled the day before they were due to travel, and may well be surprised to find that this doesn't count as a cancellation.

"Things like this leave a sour taste in the mouth - and damage trust in the railway. The scale of this so-called 'P-coding' on some operators in recent months has highlighted the problem. We are pleased to be contributing the passenger voice in industry discussions about how to address the regulator's concerns."

[stuving]

The ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) report itself is here, and they produced this graphic (from Twitter):

The chart shows the operators reporting p-coded pre-cancellations and the impact on their official cancellations score for 8 Jan to 4 Feb 2023.

Those seven are the only TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) who had any of these p-coded cancellations, part or full, and the all-operator cancellation rate goes up from 3.5% to 3.8% if they are included.