Avanti West Coast cancellations

[jfollows]

In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the union’s.

Thank you for your post, Virgin_Driver, and I'm sorry the way things have worked out for you. Personally, I'm only a passenger and I have no inside knowledge, but for me your post simply confirms my understanding of the incompetent way in which the franchise has been run under its current owners, and that things that were already bad have gone worse in recent months.

 

[Robertj21a]

First Group appear to have handled this very badly. Was all the previous top level management (or other key players) replaced?
Somebody needs to be accountable for the ongoing fiasco.

 

[JamieL]

Not sure if people are already aware - I have just had an email from Avanti saying that any seat reservations on their services that were booked before 8 August will not be valid even if that train is running. They have, however, increased the number of unreserved seats.

 

[AndrewE]

Not sure if people are already aware - I have just had an email from Avanti saying that any seat reservations on their services that were booked before 8 August will not be valid even if that train is running. They have, however, increased the number of unreserved seats.

Presumably (hopefully) to 100%!

That's better than when I last travelled, when travel centre staff told me when I tried to book that reservations had been suspended - but on the day the Train Manager announced that people should try to sit in their booked seats even though no reservations were showing.

I politely but firmly refused to move when people tried to claim the seats that we (2 grandparents and 2 small girls) were in, and all around us people accepted that if nothing was showing you couldn't just evict sitting tenants.

I have had this before: on a long journey on a busy train you risk being made to move at every stop and it is a recipe for misery. Unfortunately it seems to be "custom and practice" - albeit very sensible - rather than based on a rule.

 

[E6007]

No “decent” HR manager or personnel director can have foreseen the number of drivers who have just simply had enough. Enough of getting up at 2 and 3 am one week and getting into bed at midnight, 1 or 2 or 3 am the next. Enough of the politics between government, management and the union, enough of being treated like **** by management, rising inflation, no pay rise for three years and much much more.

How do I know this ? Because I’m one of those drivers, I gave my six months notice and finished in March after thirty seven years service aged fifty five. Never have I ever been so glad to get out of a place, sad because I loved driving trains and had done so since age 21. In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the union’s.

The management freely admit they need drivers to work their rostered days off just to run over four hundred services each and every week.
Now drivers not wanting to work their rostered days off is why the service has been in disarray.

There are plenty more working through their notice period and a lot more considering their options.

This is so sad, especially when we consider the attitude of DfT over the years and their "anybody but Virgin" attitude during the last couple of competitive bidding cycles for Inter City West Coast

 

[ymbongo]

Despite the "emergency timetable on top of an already pared down timetable" it seems cancellations are still not a rarity - the Wrexham was cancelled this morning for one. It can't be just down to traincrew shortages, surely - I wonder if staff have also been reduced to the absolute minimum in other areas too such as planning or resourcing, leaving them unable to react in time to changing events.

In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the unions.

There are plenty more working through their notice period and a lot more considering their options.

From what I know I think this sums up a lot of the problem - Virgin, at least until a few years ago, were able to get away with expecting a lot of favours and goodwill from their employees, which kept the trains running - and did so by handsomely rewarding the staff, either with extra hours of pay, time off in lieu, or just other nice gestures like the annual Branson house party. I believe that Branson had the correct idea that you "look after your staff and they will look after your company".
However, once the current lot moved in, it seems that they took everything and gave nothing. Then the awful public "condemnation" of their own employees, along with various subtle and not-so-subtle threats and actions in ripping up historic agreements, was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[jfollows]

I believe that Branson had the correct idea that you "look after your staff and they will look after your company".

I agree with you, and I further believe that it's the only sustainable way to run a company for the long term. Exploit your employees, extract lots of money from the company and run away is one other tactic of course. But treating employees as if they're a distant third in the ranking behind shareholders and paying customers (aka passengers) won't work for very long in any company. Someone will doubtless come up with an exception to this!

EDIT And it's always been clear to me as a passenger that I felt significantly less valued by Avanti than I used to with Virgin, and I'm someone who has always said that Virgin was over-rated (but acceptable).

 

[WelshBluebird]

No “decent” HR manager or personnel director can have foreseen the number of drivers who have just simply had enough. Enough of getting up at 2 and 3 am one week and getting into bed at midnight, 1 or 2 or 3 am the next. Enough of the politics between government, management and the union, enough of being treated like **** by management, rising inflation, no pay rise for three years and much much more.

How do I know this ? Because I’m one of those drivers, I gave my six months notice and finished in March after thirty seven years service aged fifty five. Never have I ever been so glad to get out of a place, sad because I loved driving trains and had done so since age 21. In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the union’s.

Decent managers and HR staff absolutely should know what their workforce is generally feeling though, and so if there was a general loss of goodwill because of a variety of issues coming together then they should have seen it coming. If they didn't realise those issues existed and could result in what you describe then they wernt doing their jobs.

 

[Statto]

Oh dear, seems like someone forgot about a late arriving train

​

Avanti passengers locked in Oxenholme station after late train

Some 30 people were stranded when they arrived at midnight 100 minutes late and staff had closed up.

www.bbc.co.uk

Passengers were stranded in a locked station after their train arrived 100 minutes late, an MP has said.
About 30 passengers got off the Avanti West Coast service from London Euston to Glasgow at Oxenholme in Cumbria on Tuesday to find the station closed.
Passenger Jonathan Gilmore said it had been due in at 22:20 BST but was late. Westmorland Lib Dem MP Tim Farron said it was an "unacceptable farce".
Avanti has apologised and said it was investigating what happened.
Mr Gilmore, who had paid £80 for his ticket, told BBC Radio Cumbria passengers faced three options when they got off the train, which arrived at Oxenholme at about midnight.
They could scale the 8ft high gate, walk across the live tracks or "pick somewhere to try and sleep on a pavement until the morning".
He said there was no communication from Avanti and it was only when someone contacted Mr Farron that any help came, with a Network Rail worker opening the gate 45 minutes after the passengers arrived.

 

[TheEdge]

One wonders if the whole thing will come to a head with some kind of safety-related incident, perhaps as a result of something like this, or perhaps controls being overworked.

Accidents can happen as a result of the strangest small little detail setting off a chain of events, and this constant messing around over timetabling and crewing could well set the scene for something. It’s all a rather sad state or affairs.

It'll be placed squarely on the driver/conductor/dispatcher involved. Because when something goes wrong its easier and more expedient to blame the person who makes the final mistake rather than anything organizational. That way you can dispose of the individual and continue to pretend everything else is fine. "You can't be tired, the spreadsheet says so" kind of situation.

 

[BJames]

Oh dear, seems like someone forgot about a late arriving train

​

Avanti passengers locked in Oxenholme station after late train

Some 30 people were stranded when they arrived at midnight 100 minutes late and staff had closed up.

www.bbc.co.uk

Passengers were stranded in a locked station after their train arrived 100 minutes late, an MP has said.
About 30 passengers got off the Avanti West Coast service from London Euston to Glasgow at Oxenholme in Cumbria on Tuesday to find the station closed.
Passenger Jonathan Gilmore said it had been due in at 22:20 BST but was late. Westmorland Lib Dem MP Tim Farron said it was an "unacceptable farce".
Avanti has apologised and said it was investigating what happened.
Mr Gilmore, who had paid £80 for his ticket, told BBC Radio Cumbria passengers faced three options when they got off the train, which arrived at Oxenholme at about midnight.
They could scale the 8ft high gate, walk across the live tracks or "pick somewhere to try and sleep on a pavement until the morning".
He said there was no communication from Avanti and it was only when someone contacted Mr Farron that any help came, with a Network Rail worker opening the gate 45 minutes after the passengers arrived.

Surprised that the first thought was to contact MP for help while the situation was still ongoing. My first thought would be a help point - potentially 101 if there was no other way of getting out - or a number for Network Rail, surely they have a 24 hr line? Interested to hear what someone who actually works on the railway would suggest the best option is in this situation?

 

[TheEdge]

Surprised that the first thought was to contact MP for help while the situation was still ongoing. My first thought would be a help point - potentially 101 if there was no other way of getting out - or a number for Network Rail, surely they have a 24 hr line? Interested to hear what someone who actually works on the railway would suggest the best option is in this situation?

Help Point.

I suspect there are some steps missing between "getting to the station" and "your MP getting the gate open", I doubt many MPs are monitoring their media accounts with a hotline to Network Rail at almost midnight.

 

[FenMan]

Help Point.

I suspect there are some steps missing between "getting to the station" and "your MP getting the gate open", I doubt many MPs are monitoring their media accounts with a hotline to Network Rail at almost midnight.

Putting on one side a keen MP showing how they add value to their electorate, this was a major failure.

Looking forward to "insider"posts explaining that stuff happens etc. but, getting back to the fundamentals, if Avanti were an airline they'd have gone out of business long ago.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Surprised that the first thought was to contact MP for help while the situation was still ongoing. My first thought would be a help point - potentially 101 if there was no other way of getting out - or a number for Network Rail, surely they have a 24 hr line? Interested to hear what someone who actually works on the railway would suggest the best option is in this situation?

Tim Farron is probably better at keeping an eye on things than most public services are!

Agree though that it probably wasn’t the first port of call.

 

[Bertie the bus]

I doubt you are going to get much help from a help point at close to midnight. Even if you got an answer they probably wouldn't do anything useful.

If it was a choice between a help point and Tim Farron it would be Tim Farron every time.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

No “decent” HR manager or personnel director can have foreseen the number of drivers who have just simply had enough. Enough of getting up at 2 and 3 am one week and getting into bed at midnight, 1 or 2 or 3 am the next. Enough of the politics between government, management and the union, enough of being treated like **** by management, rising inflation, no pay rise for three years and much much more.

How do I know this ? Because I’m one of those drivers, I gave my six months notice and finished in March after thirty seven years service aged fifty five. Never have I ever been so glad to get out of a place, sad because I loved driving trains and had done so since age 21. In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the union’s.

The management freely admit they need drivers to work their rostered days off just to run over four hundred services each and every week.
Now drivers not wanting to work their rostered days off is why the service has been in disarray.

There are plenty more working through their notice period and a lot more considering their options.

Really very sad indeed. I’m sorry that this happened.

 

[the sniper]

I doubt you are going to get much help from a help point at close to midnight. Even if you got an answer they probably wouldn't do anything useful.

If it was a choice between a help point and Tim Farron it would be Tim Farron every time.

It'd either get you though to the TOCs control or the emergency services, surely? Would Oxenholme have a help point fitted though?

 

[172101]

Oh dear, seems like someone forgot about a late arriving train

​

Avanti passengers locked in Oxenholme station after late train

Some 30 people were stranded when they arrived at midnight 100 minutes late and staff had closed up.

www.bbc.co.uk

Passengers were stranded in a locked station after their train arrived 100 minutes late, an MP has said.
About 30 passengers got off the Avanti West Coast service from London Euston to Glasgow at Oxenholme in Cumbria on Tuesday to find the station closed.
Passenger Jonathan Gilmore said it had been due in at 22:20 BST but was late. Westmorland Lib Dem MP Tim Farron said it was an "unacceptable farce".
Avanti has apologised and said it was investigating what happened.
Mr Gilmore, who had paid £80 for his ticket, told BBC Radio Cumbria passengers faced three options when they got off the train, which arrived at Oxenholme at about midnight.
They could scale the 8ft high gate, walk across the live tracks or "pick somewhere to try and sleep on a pavement until the morning".
He said there was no communication from Avanti and it was only when someone contacted Mr Farron that any help came, with a Network Rail worker opening the gate 45 minutes after the passengers arrived.

Hundreads of inner London stations are open all night with the barriers (if they have any) just left open, so why lock up a station in the middle of nowhere?

 

[philthetube]

Decent managers and HR staff absolutely should know what their workforce is generally feeling though, and so if there was a general loss of goodwill because of a variety of issues coming together then they should have seen it coming. If they didn't realise those issues existed and could result in what you describe then they wernt doing their jobs.

It may be unfair to blame the HR team, they may have been aware of the developing situation and told the high ups to then be ignored.

 

[Scotrail12]

Looking on Twitter, journalist Benjamin Butterworth is having issues with Avanti cutting trains on the Manchester route and there are seemingly no tickets available. Trying to make sense of his situation, it seems like Avanti are telling him to book two singles at a significantly higher fare. Any idea why they would do that?

https://twitter.com/benjaminbutter/status/1560005672250626053

This is beyond parody. @AvantiWestCoast, which has slashed the number of trains and hiked prices, tells me I should buy two single tickets which would be nearly double the cost to avoid the problems they have caused.

 

[JamieL]

Presumably (hopefully) to 100%!

That's better than when I last travelled, when travel centre staff told me when I tried to book that reservations had been suspended - but on the day the Train Manager announced that people should try to sit in their booked seats even though no reservations were showing.

I politely but firmly refused to move when people tried to claim the seats that we (2 grandparents and 2 small girls) were in, and all around us people accepted that if nothing was showing you couldn't just evict sitting tenants.

I have had this before: on a long journey on a busy train you risk being made to move at every stop and it is a recipe for misery. Unfortunately it seems to be "custom and practice" - albeit very sensible - rather than based on a rule.

Seat reservations booked after 8 August are still valid and allocations are being made for new tickets. If you have a ticket booked direct through Avanti you can go on their app/website and use the change the date function to select the same train and re-book your seat. For those with advance tickets though this means there will be a charge to take it up to the Anytime price.

 

[Andy Pacer]

Hundreads of inner London stations are open all night with the barriers (if they have any) just left open, so why lock up a station in the middle of nowhere?

A very good point, I can't exactly expect there to be high levels of anti social behaviour. They can still obviously lock the buildings up .

 

[Piper]

No “decent” HR manager or personnel director can have foreseen the number of drivers who have just simply had enough. Enough of getting up at 2 and 3 am one week and getting into bed at midnight, 1 or 2 or 3 am the next. Enough of the politics between government, management and the union, enough of being treated like **** by management, rising inflation, no pay rise for three years and much much more.

How do I know this ? Because I’m one of those drivers, I gave my six months notice and finished in March after thirty seven years service aged fifty five. Never have I ever been so glad to get out of a place, sad because I loved driving trains and had done so since age 21. In the space of two and a half years First Group have taken what was, under VT, a happy work force who would bend over backwards to keep the service running and cancellations were a rarity and driven it and everyone into the ground, imposing changes and totally ignoring the machinery of negotiation with the union’s.

The management freely admit they need drivers to work their rostered days off just to run over four hundred services each and every week.
Now drivers not wanting to work their rostered days off is why the service has been in disarray.

There are plenty more working through their notice period and a lot more considering their options.

£60,000 a year isn't bad though isn't it?

 

[Bletchleyite]

£60,000 a year isn't bad though isn't it?

Thing is, you can earn that in IT, with...
- 35/37.5/40 hour 5 day week, Mon-Fri, no (or very few) weekends, and where weekend work is needed it's usually "sitting in front of the telly with the laptop on while a release is being done" or similar
- Holidays largely when you like
- No responsibility for others' safety
- Being respected by management (IT is a very "equal" industry, and if you're under bad management finding a new role usually isn't too hard)

So I suppose the question is...is it?

Only downside is that IT is generally "salaried" rather than "waged" so you have no overtime potential, though if you work for a startup and it does well bonuses can be substantial.

I think however it may be this one that is the key:
- Being respected by management (IT is a very "equal" industry, and if you're under bad management finding a new role usually isn't too hard)

I can't quite imagine working in an environment as adversarial as the railway in terms of the management-staff relationship, and Avanti do seem to be the absolute worst at the moment from what I can see.

 

[Mag_seven]

Oh dear, seems like someone forgot about a late arriving train

​

Avanti passengers locked in Oxenholme station after late train

Some 30 people were stranded when they arrived at midnight 100 minutes late and staff had closed up.

www.bbc.co.uk

Passengers were stranded in a locked station after their train arrived 100 minutes late, an MP has said.
About 30 passengers got off the Avanti West Coast service from London Euston to Glasgow at Oxenholme in Cumbria on Tuesday to find the station closed.
Passenger Jonathan Gilmore said it had been due in at 22:20 BST but was late. Westmorland Lib Dem MP Tim Farron said it was an "unacceptable farce".
Avanti has apologised and said it was investigating what happened.
Mr Gilmore, who had paid £80 for his ticket, told BBC Radio Cumbria passengers faced three options when they got off the train, which arrived at Oxenholme at about midnight.
They could scale the 8ft high gate, walk across the live tracks or "pick somewhere to try and sleep on a pavement until the morning".
He said there was no communication from Avanti and it was only when someone contacted Mr Farron that any help came, with a Network Rail worker opening the gate 45 minutes after the passengers arrived.

Please see this thread:

Oxenholme station last night (16/08/22)- passengers "locked in"

Just seen this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/di_gilmore/status/1559675571050872832 Not cool @AvantiWestCoast London train arrived at Oxenholme station over 100 minutes late. The only way out of the station was to climb the locked gates! You couldn’t make it up #utterdisgrace...

www.railforums.co.uk

thanks

 

[XAM2175]

I politely but firmly refused to move when people tried to claim the seats that we (2 grandparents and 2 small girls) were in, and all around us people accepted that if nothing was showing you couldn't just evict sitting tenants.

I have had this before: on a long journey on a busy train you risk being made to move at every stop and it is a recipe for misery. Unfortunately it seems to be "custom and practice" - albeit very sensible - rather than based on a rule.

I'm quite certain that it's in official policies somewhere that when reservations are not displayed then they're invalid, but of course I've no idea where to find that written.

However, it is definitely policy (under NRCoT 30.1, the same provisions as for disruption) that if your reservation will not be honoured you are entitled to abandon your journey and received a full refund of your fare.

 

[Iskra]

If the number of staff willing to work weekends has dropped from 300 to 50, then the logical solution is just to replace them with full time staff and end rest day working. You cant build a timetable around giving staff the opportunity to earn the extra pay if not enough of them are willing to take up the entitlement.

Why wouldn't you just gradually employ a load of part-time weekend staff? Then you'd be covered 24/7 and the weekenders might even pick up shifts in the week when convenient and the full timers would be happier with more weekends off- it's how many business' operate.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm quite certain that it's in official policies somewhere that when reservations are not displayed then they're invalid, but of course I've no idea where to find that written.

However, it is definitely policy (under NRCoT 30.1, the same provisions as for disruption) that if your reservation will not be honoured you are entitled to abandon your journey and received a full refund of your fare.

I've said many times that it barely matters what the policy is as long as there is signage clearly stating what it is.

Unfortunately not one TOC sees fit to provide this.

Small signs saying either "If reservations are not shown on the displays, they are not valid; please take any available seat in this case" or "Reservations still apply even if not displayed; please vacate your seat if shown a reservation for it. Coach C is completely unreserved." would not be hard.

 

[ar10642]

Despite the "emergency timetable on top of an already pared down timetable" it seems cancellations are still not a rarity - the Wrexham was cancelled this morning for one. It can't be just down to traincrew shortages, surely - I wonder if staff have also been reduced to the absolute minimum in other areas too such as planning or resourcing, leaving them unable to react in time to changing events.



From what I know I think this sums up a lot of the problem - Virgin, at least until a few years ago, were able to get away with expecting a lot of favours and goodwill from their employees, which kept the trains running - and did so by handsomely rewarding the staff, either with extra hours of pay, time off in lieu, or just other nice gestures like the annual Branson house party. I believe that Branson had the correct idea that you "look after your staff and they will look after your company".
However, once the current lot moved in, it seems that they took everything and gave nothing. Then the awful public "condemnation" of their own employees, along with various subtle and not-so-subtle threats and actions in ripping up historic agreements, was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

I used to work for one of the Virgin brands (before Covid wrecked everything) and it's probably the best place I've ever worked for. They really do go the extra mile to keep their employees happy. Seems like you'll need to do that if you're relying on voluntary overtime to keep the basic service running.

 

[XAM2175]

I've said many times that it barely matters what the policy is as long as there is signage clearly stating what it is.

I lean towards saying that not displayed should equal not valid, on the grounds that the other option is even more of an enormous pain, but yes picking one system and getting the word out is key.