Northern Rail's nine years of decline described as 'betrayal of the North'
Northern Rail bosses have admitted that the operator’s performance has been declining since 2015, and claimed it will take another three years to get services up to a respectable level.
In a Transport for the North meeting with company executives, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham described this as a “betrayal of the North”.
Mr Burnham said: “From 2015, things have been going downhill.
“We were promised Northern Powerhouse Rail at that time, and ever since then the public of the North have had a worse and worse rail service.
“That is a pretty significant betrayal of the people of the North.
“That is really a serious failure of the Department for Transport, ministers in it and politicians that have been involved.
“It’s not really forgivable, it’s caused a lot of damage to a lot of people’s lives.”
In 2020, the government took over Northern as an “operator of last resort” after stripping the franchise from Arriva due to performance issues.
Timetable changes in 2018 led to rail chaos, and a significant increase in delays and cancellations.
The Office of Rail and Road recently found that 80 per cent of Northern train cancellations were caused by the operator, the most of any train company.
Northern's chief operating officer, Matt Rice, told mayors and officials: “Northern needs to change.
“Out and out performance numbers have not been positively trending since 2015. Things have been gradually getting worse.”
He said the rail operator’s aim was to get train punctuality up to 90 per cent and cancellations down to 2 per cent, which would require 4,000 more trains every day turning up on time.
However, he did not think this would happen until 2027.
“These are not quick wins,” Mr Rice told mayors, councillors and other officials, warning that “big” timetable changes were needed.
In the short term, Mr Rice and managing director Tricia Williams said they hoped to secure a Sunday working agreement for conductors.
Currently, conductors do not have any requirement to work on Sundays, and this issue is particularly acute in the North West.
Although South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard pointed out that the Hope Valley line, between Manchester and Sheffield, has had one in three trains on a Sunday cancelled for the last 12 weeks.
Ms Williams said an interim agreement had been approved by the RMT Union and was to be voted on by members.
“Following very constructive talks, we have reached an interim agreement for conductors to work on Sundays,” she explained.
If signed off, this would last for four months while Northern tried to reach a longer term agreement with staff.
“Northern’s issues are deep-rooted, complex and long standing … there are no quick fixes when it comes to the longer term improvements,” she added.
He explained that they were waiting for the result from RMT members, however he told Mr Coppard he did not foresee “any drastic changes to Christmas services” in South Yorkshire.
The issues, he told the mayors, would more be on the other side of the Pennines.