Official: Network Rail just not good enough

NR will have to explain to the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) what went wrong and why, ORR’s chief executive Bill Emery said.

The ORR said that in the period from October 17 to January 8, NR missed set targets covering punctuality, delays and cancellations.

The ORR added that performance slipped in autumn 2010, and was “seriously affected by the severe winter weather, despite great efforts by many people across the railways which kept services running”.

Mr Emery said: “Over recent years NR has worked with the rail industry to improve performance on Britain’s railway and has raised expectations of what our railways should be delivering.

“Recent performance, however, has not been good enough. NR will miss many of its annual performance targets this year. The company is coming in to explain what went wrong and why, and what it is doing to restore performance.”

NR’s operations and customers services director Robin Gisby said: “Our mission is to give a great service every day, but over the winter period our performance has taken a hit and many passengers saw disruption to their journeys.

“While the rail network, as a whole, held up reasonably well, not every service offered to passengers and freight operators was as good as they expect and rightly demand.

“We endeavoured to run as many trains as possible and sometimes put capacity ahead of punctuality. Working closely with train operators, we are looking at what we can do take to further reduce the impact of extreme weather on journeys and improve the flow of information to passengers.

“We will put this behind us and work with all our customers to set new targets that put us back ahead of the trajectory towards 2014.”

The ORR also announced today that it had approved track access rights for the new West Coast main line franchise currently operated by Virgin Trains.

The approval paves the way for improved services on this key London to Scotland route, with the ORR now requiring NR to work with the rail industry to develop plans for a revised West Coast timetable to be implemented in stages from December 2013.

The ORR said it had turned down an application by the Grand Central company to run services from Euston in London to Blackpool and also refused the Alliance company’s application to operate services from Euston to Leeds/Bradford, Blackpool and Carlisle.

However, the ORR said Alliance had submitted a revised application and that would be considered.

And although it has not given Grand Central or Alliance the go-ahead, the ORR said the way was open for the introduction of “limited competition from new operators” on the West Coast line.

The ORR did give permission for the London Midland company to run additional services on the West Coast line between Euston and Northampton but turned down its application for extending a number of its services on to Liverpool.

Grand Central said it was “surprised and disappointed” at the ORR decision.

Last year NR paid out more than £2 million in performance-related bonuses to its top bosses.

Yesterday new chief executive David Higgins told the House of Commons Transport Committee that he favoured bonuses if they were earned and the process was made transparent.

Today, Gerry Doherty, leader of the TSSA transport union, said: “These latest bad set of figures should mean that David Higgins and his fellow directors should cancel their huge bonuses for this year immediately.

“Have these people no sense of shame? All they seem to think about is how much they can make on the gravy train which is being funded by the taxpayer.”