Car allowances for senior Scotrail staff

[Sonik]

When front line operational roles are chronically under resourced to save money, why do you imagine TOCs employ any more office staff than they need to, let alone employing people who “effectively do nothing”?

Because the structure of our fragmented railway system requires a huge number of staff to manage many things that are not directly required to run a railway, essentially as a direct consequence of a misguided 25 year attempt to create 'competition' in an industry that inherently operates a natural monopoly.

Isn't that exactly why GBR was proposed?

 

[Dr Hoo]

As a former ScotRail employee in BR days I can confirm that there were plenty of office/managerial jobs pre-privatisation, most obviously in what used to be known as Buchanan House (later ScotRail House).
We could really do with a list of these supposed senior ‘non-jobs’ to establish the premise of this argument.

 

[Clarence Yard]

GBR is being created to streamline and save money, not necessarily in HQ roles. Privatisation has seen a huge reduction in HQ activities, sometimes done quite brutally (think Stagecoach, Virgin) and the number of people employed in these roles is far less than some people think.

It will shrink further under GBR as “transactional” activities are reduced but as around 92.5% of an average TOC payroll is frontline activity related, that is where the real payroll saving focus will be.

 

[Sonik]

GBR is being created to streamline and save money, not necessarily in HQ roles. Privatisation has seen a huge reduction in HQ activities, sometimes done quite brutally (think Stagecoach, Virgin) and the number of people employed in these roles is far less than some people think.

It will shrink further under GBR as “transactional” activities are reduced but as around 92.5% of an average TOC payroll is frontline activity related, that is where the real payroll saving focus will be.

So what is the point of GBR then, if the potential available efficiency saving is so marginal? What can GBR do to reduce front-line costs that the TOCs haven't done already?

As a former ScotRail employee in BR days I can confirm that there were plenty of office/managerial jobs pre-privatisation, most obviously is what used to be known as Buchanan House (later ScotRail House)

I don't disagree that BR was inefficient, but privatization in it's current guise simply introduced plenty of different inefficiencies.

 

[Dave W]

So what is the point of GBR then, if the potential available efficiency saving is so marginal? What can GBR do to reduce front-line costs that the TOCs haven't done already?

There's a lot more to it than saving on the payroll surely?

Streamlining back office systems such as HR and finance will save fair amounts (and reduce staff requirement too). Then again that's quite a Utopian view of it all that relies on competence in so doing. And this is quite far from the original point.

 

[43066]

Because the structure of our fragmented railway system requires a huge number of staff to manage many things that are not directly required to run a railway.

Isn't that exactly why GBR was proposed?

Not sure that’s necessarily the case as it doesn’t appear that the GBR structure will be *that* different to what’s there already in terms of many separate private companies remaining involved in running the railway. GBR is *not* a recreation of BR.

As for “a huge number or staff” managing things “not directly required to run a railway”, do you have any examples of these? Things like finance, marketing, HR aren’t necessarily railway specific, but they are key components of all large businesses, both public and private sector.

A common example trotted out is that of delay attribution clerks, but those in the know have regularly pointed out A. They existed under BR, and B. There aren’t that many of them.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any evidence that the railway is over staffed in these functions compared to other industries - indeed anecdotally the opposite often appears to be the case.

 

[Sonik]

Streamlining back office systems such as HR and finance will save fair amounts (and reduce staff requirement too). Then again that's quite a Utopian view of it all that relies on competence in so doing. And this is quite far from the original point.

As for “a huge number or staff” managing things “not directly required to run a railway”, do you have any examples of these? Things like finance, marketing, HR aren’t necessarily railway specific, but they are key components of all large businesses, both public and private sector.

So the issue then is unnecessary duplication of roles between many separate organisations? Back office functions and management structures do not scale linearly.

Or to put that another way, a huge number of staff to manage many things that are not directly required to run a railway.

 

[Falcon1200]

A common example trotted out is that of delay attribution clerks, but those in the know have regularly pointed out A. They existed under BR, and B. There aren’t that many of them.

Indeed, and I would add C, if the railway has no record of why trains are delayed, how does it address the causes ?

 

[Dave W]

Well it's still not just staff... As an example, the cost of providing one large shared service system for HR and Finance does not equate to the cost of providing 20 individual ones within TOCs; there are definitely efficiencies to be made in streamlining back office systems; this will have the additional consequence of reducing headcount.

 

[Mag_seven]

This thread has run its course.