West Yorkshire’s Mayor Tracy Brabin criticises the boss of Transpennine Express

Tracy Brabin has highlighted the poor service of the rail company in recent months – going as far as calling for them to be stripped of their franchise.

It comes after numerous cancellations – particularly on routes between Yorkshrie and Manchester.

Ms Brabin says issues with the services is costing the Northern economy £8m a week.

On Wednesday Steven Montgomery, CEO of First Group, which Transpennine Express are a part of, appeared before the Rail North Committee – a group that advises the Transport for the North Board on rail services and infrastructure improvements.

He said the company had plans in place to improve services, but that these plans were unlikely to drastically improve the situation any time soon.

He told members: “We’ve got to get through this pain barrier.

“We’re putting more resources in, but this doesn’t change it. If you don’t have enough productive drivers the situation will not improve until people go through the pipeline so we have people full trained and robustly trained to drive all the routes.

“I accept that the plan that we’ve given on TPE is something that seems a long way off. We are looking at what else we can do and what other areas we can try and progress more quickly, but what I can’t do is give you false hope

“I can’t give you a definitive that this will all be resolved in the next two month because we cannot just train that amount of drivers in that time.

“In response to Mayor Brabin, do I believe in the plan. It’s the best plan we have at this moment in time.”

Ms Brabin replied: “On a day when commuters are experiencing yet more cancellations and travel disruptions, the man who is ultimately responsible for TransPennine Express is telling commuters they have to continue suffering through this ‘pain barrier’.

“We have been suffering for a year now and the people of West Yorkshire have had enough.

“Being told we must wait for several more months before we see any sort of improvement isn’t good enough – this is costing the Northern economy £8 million a week.

“This sounds like a rail company blaming others while trying to disguise their own failures as circumstances beyond their control.”