One of the strangest aspects of the current structure of the railway industry is that there are already four train companies which have been effectively been nationalised as they are run by the government’s operator of last resort. They can be considered as the vanguard of the ‘renationalisation’ policy that is at the heart of Labour plans for the railways except that there is an inherent problem – they have been taken over precisely because they were failing in the private sector.
The four franchises – LNER, Northern, South Eastern and TransPennine Express – are the testing ground for the operation of franchises as part of a government owned organisation. But because they were failing, they are not a representative sample and those running them face an uphill task to show that taking back operations in house is a good idea that will lead to the crucial improvements which the politicians can claim as a success for their policies. This is by no means ideal. It would be much easier if successful franchises were incorporated into the new structure but, as I have written previously (Rail 1015) this cannot be done until the new Passenger Railways Services Act is passed in the autumn. When talking to senior managers who have taken over these faltering franchises, they invariably point to how it is easier to get things done when they are under the umbrella of the operator of last resort, rather than in the old system when they were in the private sector.
One of these testing grounds is TransPennine Express which was taken over by the Department for Transport last summer after services deteriorated to such an extent that passengers complained they could no long rely on their rail network. After a difficult period, TransPennine Express’s new management now feels now confident enough to have invited a group of journalists to its maintenance depot in Ardwick for a briefing on progress.
Indeed, TPE had become a byword for the industry’s ills with widespread media coverage of its poor performance under FirstGroup management in the summer of 2023. At one point cancellations reached one in eight trains and and so it was no surprises when the contract was not renewed. Things were indeed dire, and not improved by the fact that a set of new trains, CAF’s infamous Mark 5A Nova coaches, were performing so badly that the 13 five coach trains were deemed surplus to requirements and returned to their leasing company. While it was a brave decision to ditch rolling stock that was barely five years old, at best only four of the sets had been in use daily and with three other classes of trains in use by TPE, they added unnecessary complexity in terms of driver training.
The new managing director, Chris Jackson, who took over after the termination of the contract set himself three clear targets – to ensure the recovery of train performance, to improve relations both internally (code for sorting out the trade unions) and externally (code for passengers) and ensuring the operator was properly prepared to the huge Transpennine upgrade programme. There is certainly a lot of optimism about as the operator is planning to restore the 25 or so services cut from its daily total of 325 in December last year in response to its series of problems.
One of the advantages of being under the wing of the government’s own operator is that it became easier for decisions to be made that involved investing in order to bring in extra revenue. Some 300 new staff have been recruited, improving customer service and reliability. The most pressing staffing problem was the lack of driver availability and a rest day working agreement which had been ‘on the shelf’ for some time was negotiated successfully with the ASLEF, enabling a much bigger driver training programme to be introduced: ‘We are not short of drivers’ Jackson emphasises. That is not the issue, but rather having the right knowledge and ability to use diversionary routes which has become even more necessary because of the upgrade programme. Jackson explains: ‘We will have around 150 days every year as routes are blocked because of the Transpennine upgrade. Therefore having diversionary routes available is absolutely essential to keep services operating’. Jackson also stresses that the importance of the driver flexibility enabled by the rest day agreement. It runs out early next year and Jackson is very keen to get a long term arrangement in place.
However, Jackson is confident that his announcement of the restoration of the full timetable will be realised and this will help attract people back onto the railways. He is aware that it is not only reliability that is required, but passengers need a better offer. Interestingly, coincidentally, although we were talking before the publication of the last issue of Rail, he referred to the subject I covered in that issue’s column about the need for wifi on trains. Jackson is investigating how much it would cost to remove the cap on the amount of data that could be used on trains. As I mentioned in that article, it is the operators who restrict the amount of data that comes through the equipment on the roof of trains because they pay for it per megabyte. Yet, to allow full coverage would, might apparently, only cost around £200,000 fir the train company which may well pay for itself in terms of extra passengers.
This is the right sort of thinking. Train travel has to be made more attractive and it is not just about reliability. That should be at the top of the agenda for whoever is going to be taking the reins of Great British Railways. People like Chris Jackson and Steve White, the boss of SouthEastern about whose scheme to ensure a far more diverse and local workforce I wrote recently (Rail 1006) have shown that far from being a handicap, working in what is effectively the public sector can be commercially effective too. Of course giving value for money is important but there is a freedom in the public sector afforded by the lack of hungry profit-maximising shareholders.
There is a wider point here. In several discussions with industry people recently, they have argued that the transfer of operations into the public sector will remove ‘incentives’ to provide a good service and to attract more passengers. I have heard this same argument about ticket retailing. We need the third party retailers, I am told, because they bring in extra revenue as the old BR had no incentive to sell tickets. This is poppycock. Great innovators like Chris Green made great efforts to bring in more passengers with all kinds of offers and initiatives. It is a reflection of the politics of the past 30 years that people have been persuaded that managers and staff need a financial incentive in order to perform well. Great British Railways should be a way of challenging that defeatist concept.
ASLEF’s poor timing
The right wing media, which has been rather desperate for what it sees as a good story since the election, had a field day over the new pay deal for drivers and the announcement, the following day of yet more industrial action (or rather inaction) in the offing on LNER services. Specifically, there was a threat of 22 days of strike action at weekends.
In fact, much of the coverage failed to explain that this was a completely separate dispute and it is at a local, rather than national, level. It involves long running complaints of LNER drivers about poor rostering practice by management and other complaints about local working conditions. In my years of covering this industry, I have seen countless such threats fizzle out after a bit of head banging between unions and management. I am convinced that with goodwill, this could be resolved before any walkouts.
However, the announcement by ASLEF will have ensured that any champagne corks in the office of the transport ministers over the expected ending of the strikes over pay will have quickly been put back in the bottles! Indeed, Louise Haigh and her team must have been apoplectic. ASLEF’s headquarters should have been aware of the proposed action and told the local union reps in no uncertain terms to go back to the negotiating table rather than announcing a series of strikes on the very day after the end of the two year dispute was in sight. Surely they should have recognised that the action would be deeply damaging for relations between the union and the Labour party.