Northern England's poor rail services caused by toxic mix, MPs told

"Unstable" rail services in northern England have been caused by a "toxic combination" of issues, MPs have heard.

Thousands of trains have been cancelled at short notice in recent months with TransPennine Express, Avanti West Coast and Northern services all affected.

Transport Focus's Anthony Smith told the Transport Select Committee it led to people travelling by road instead.

Lord McLoughlin, who chairs Transport for the North, added it had been a "total letdown" for rail passengers.

A sitting of the committee was called to hear from experts and industry figures involved in the delivery of rail services across north of England, which have been condemned as "chaos" by regional mayors across the area.

Giving evidence, Mr Smith, whose body is the independent watchdog for transport users, was asked why operators in the region had struggled compared with those in other parts of the country.

He said it was due to a "rather toxic combination which is different for each company".

"With Avanti, I think the problems probably date back to the days of Virgin... and the winding-down of that franchise," he said.

He said the Covid-19 pandemic had then "made training drivers difficult", which had in turn led to a "thinning-out of the timetable".

He added that relationships between staff and management "don't seem to be good and need resetting in some way".

Lord McLoughlin, who chairs the region's statutory sub-national transport body, told the committee that one of the most important things for people wanting to use the train was "reliability and knowing that the service that they want to use is going to be there".

"That is the greatest problem the companies have to address," he said.

"There has been a total letdown with unreliable services, not being able to get tickets, not knowing whether services are going to run, and also getting that information out."

New timetables were introduced by TransPennine Express, Avanti West Coast and Northern on Sunday, which the industry membership body the Rail Delivery Group said would "provide more certainty for passengers" after months of problems.

Nick Donovan, managing director at Northern, told the committee staff absence was responsible for about 70% of the cancellations caused by internal factors and that the firm's sickness levels were "running at about double of normal rates", with some depots being "up at 14% or so".

He said he could not give a "precise forecast on when that will be dealt with", but there had been a recent improvement in cancellation rates and "really good work" between management teams and the drivers' union Aslef meant rostering arrangements had been agreed before the new timetables came in.

Richard Scott, director at Avanti's parent company West Coast Partnership, told the MPs the new timetables represented a "40% uplift in services" and were crucial to "getting things back on track and providing a reliable, sustainable, robust service".

TransPennine Express managing director Matthew Golton apologised to the committee on behalf of the company and said it had "let customers and communities down with the service delivery that we've had".

He insisted there was a "very strong pipeline" of trainee drivers, but a return to rest-day working would "make a material difference to our progress", adding: "What we have to do... is get this timetable performing more reliably and make a significant inroad into the number of cancellations."

In a written statement to the committee, Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he had given TransPennine Express and Northern "the scope they need to put a meaningful and generous" offer to Aslef.

He said the union needed to "enter negotiations and put any new deal to its members and, if accepted, do all it can to make that deal work", adding that TransPennine had made a "generous revised offer... and it was almost immediately rejected without being put to members."

"It is up to the unions to decide if they want to improve services, for the good of passengers and the wider economy in the North," he said.

He added that he was in favour of "breaking the railway's dependence on rest-day working altogether", as "no modern and successful business relies on the goodwill of its staff to deliver for its customers".

The issue was later raised by Carlisle's Conservative MP John Stevenson at Prime Minister's Questions.

Mr Stevenson told Rishi Sunak that on Avanti West Coast, a "three and a half hour journey takes six hours, a straight journey ends up with two changes and a diversion [and] a train is cancelled at short notice".

He said that had become the regular experience of a passenger using the operator's services and urged the prime minister to consider cancelling the firm's franchise if management "do not get their act together".

Mr Sunak said he shared the "frustration that this causing", but said the immediate priority was "to support the restoration of services before then making any long-term decisions on the operations of the West Coast franchise".

However, he added that the government was "closely monitoring" the firm's roll-out of its recovery plan and would "hold the franchise to account".

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