Sir Nicholas Soames MP wants fines for train driver no shows

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

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

Sir Nicholas Soames MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) wants fines for train driver no shows


Southern Rail said there were "many reasons" services were disrupted

Rail companies should be fined for cancellations caused by staff "no shows", a Sussex MP has said.

Sir Nicholas Soames, who represents Mid Sussex, said he had spoken to Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin urging the measure.

He said: "There have been too many cases where passengers on the railway are treated extremely disrespectfully by staff simply not turning up."

A Southern Rail spokeswoman said there were "many reasons why this happens".

Sir Nicholas said: "Where the rail companies allow this to happen they should be fined for it, because I think if you consider how expensive it is to travel on the train it is a contract between the passenger and the rail operator. And it is one which the rail operator regularly breaks."

He added: "If you ask anyone who commutes or travels extensively on the train in the Southern region they will tell you it happens very regularly."

A Southern Rail spokeswoman said when services are disrupted it can lead to train crews being displaced and unable to crew their next scheduled service. She said: "Sickness, annual leave, reliance on taxis and occasional rostering errors also all have an effect on the ability to crew every train every day. We are currently training new drivers, and as at the end of August, 60 new drivers had become qualified since the beginning of the year."

[Tim]

Surely the problem with Southern is mainly due to the employment too few drivers rather than drivers you can't be bothered to work.

If drivers "take the p**s" then by all means use the disciplinary procedure, but arbitrary fining no shows is probably illegal, certainly provocative and as a passenger I would be alarmed if I thought drivers who might be unwell were being strong armed into driving my train.

If you are so keen on fining someone then Southern is the obvious target

Nicholas Soames is a first class wally. 

[Oxonhutch]

Nicholas Soames is a first class wally. 

I think you mean "upper class".

Please don't sleight those of us who buy our tickets! 

[JayMac]

Ahh, Nicholas Soames - once (allegedly) very unflattering described by an ex girlfriend.

She said it was like having a double wardrobe fall on you with the key still in the lock.

[chrisr_75]

If you are so keen on fining someone then Southern is the obvious target

This is exactly what he is proposing:

Rail companies should be fined for cancellations caused by staff "no shows", a Sussex MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) has said.

[TaplowGreen]

If you are so keen on fining someone then Southern is the obvious target

This is exactly what he is proposing:

Rail companies should be fined for cancellations caused by staff "no shows", a Sussex MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) has said.

I think it's reasonable for TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to be penalised if trains don't run due to "non availability of staff" after all its their responsibility to ensure that enough staff available - if they make a business decision to run on the bare minimum, then they should pay the price when it falls over.

[ChrisB]

And we wonder why the railways cost souch to run in this country!!!

[Henry]

 I was under the impression that Train Operating Companies were penalised for cancellations ?

 0625 cross country from Plymouth-Edinburgh was cancelled yesterday due to no Driver.
 Surprised, are their no longer spare crews ?. Fortunately the 'Golden Hind' made a special stop at Totnes.

[ChrisB]

It counts in their MAA^▸ (Moving Annual Average) franchise stats, yes, and in their Charter reliability stats for customer compensation

[stuving]

So, how much does a TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) get fined for a cancelled train?

Well, it's all in the franchise agreement, along with "how to do the sums" as explained by lawyers. So this is how I think it goes, based on the new FGW^▸ (First Great Western) (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)?) franchise, but I haven't thoroughly read all 573 pages (yet?).

The Secretary of State calculates a moving average from the figures supplied by FGW (or GWR) of the percentage of trains cancelled. Don't worry - I'm sure someone will give him a hand if he's a bit busy.

This is limited to be between a cap and a floor value, then compared with a target value, which for 2015/16 is 0.58%. It goes down to 0.44% in 2019/20.

The same thing is done for the percentage of trains cancelled and significantly late (CaSL), for which the target is 2.72% falling to 2.26%. There are, of course, a lot of rules defining these measures, and (especially) what can be left out of them.

Depending on whether the each figure is above or below its target, a bonus or penalty is calculated as the cancellation minus target (percentages treated as a numbers) times a big sum of money.

If you want a value per cancelled train, you need to know how many trains there are in a year. The latest figure in the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)'s data heap, for 2014-15, is 517,236. The  percentages significantly late and cancelled for that year are 0.5% and 2.5%, but whether those are for the definitions that apply for the franchise payments I do not know. If they are, they are way out of line with the targets.
 
Taking the figures from the "Annual Cancellations Payment Table" (Part 3  of APPENDIX 1 TO SCHEDULE 7.1 of the franchise agreement) and scaling by the total, we get these ^ per-train figures:

Performance Calculation Year	2015/16	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20
Bonus, CaSL < target	869	860	737	1135	1274
Bonus, CaSL > target	535	529	453	698	784
Penalty, CaSL > target	1738	1720	1999	2269	2269
Penalty, CaSL < target	1069	1058	1230	1397	1396