Avanti West Coast contract extended for six months

[Sealink]

I notice on social media that a pressure group, Bring Back British Rail, are to protest about the Avanti and potential TPE extensions outside DfT. Putting aside thier issue with First Group for a moment is there anyone who could, conceivably, run a better service in the current climate?

The issue, surely, is IR rather than service/reliability based.

LNER seem to be doing fairly well on East Coast.

In fact LNER shame most other operators I have used. Granted it's an Inter City operation but their marketing, food, staff all seem really good. (As I found when I upgraded to F on an INV KGX journey).

 

[Efini92]

They look to see if the improvement has been sustained and, if it has, Avanti will get an NRC.

I suspect their “robust timetable” will start to fall apart now that the quieter months for leave are over.

 

[nlogax]

In what appears to be a related move AWC have started sending invites for passengers to join their Community Platform. Appears to be a simple voice of the customer / research exercise conducted via a third party, Human8.

Anyone here signed up? I'm in two minds tbh.

 

[Mogz]

Is there a “Bring back LMS” group? ;-D

 

[Master29]

Is there a “Bring back LMS” group? ;-D

One wonders if that is what the government are trying to signpost. A kind of ace up the sleeve if anyone can believe it from First Group much in the way FGW became GWR.

 

[VauxhallNova]

FirstGroup doesn’t manage it’s TOCs in the way you think it does - it doesn’t even have an Ops Director or Ops department at HQ level. There is no common way of “managing” the Ops function at their TOCs.

The similarity is that the DfT is not letting the respective managements do what they would have done in the past. This means what used to be good places to work are not so attractive now. The current IR position isn’t helping either.

There is a certain common approach to industrial relations taken by both TPE and Avanti, leading to a very strong reaction from ASLEF (see links below).

Transpennine Express: Setting the Record Straight | ASLEF

Mick Whelan, General Secretary, has spoken out after the rail company sent a misleading letter to stakeholders

aslef.org.uk

Avanti West Coast: Government Rewards Abject Failure | ASLEF

ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, slammed a decision today by the Department for Transport to extend the contract of Avanti West Coast for a further six months.

aslef.org.uk

 

[Huntergreed]

LNER seem to be doing fairly well on East Coast.

In fact LNER shame most other operators I have used. Granted it's an Inter City operation but their marketing, food, staff all seem really good. (As I found when I upgraded to F on an INV KGX journey).

LNER are, as far as I’m concerned, the best TOC operating in the UK at present.

Their customer service, communication, and reliability are much better than other intercity TOC’s!

Indeed I took a journey on Avanti today in first class and the service was extremely disappointing (1 food service and 2 drinks services from Carlisle to Euston hardly justifies a huge premium from SP to first! Lucky I was on an interrail and would be travelling first anyway!)

LNER‘s service seems much more consistent, a real key in assessing the reliability of a TOC! Punctuality generally good, first class service is pretty much identical regardless of service, and you always know what to expect. I don’t think the same can be said of any other intercity UK TOC!

 

[Clarence Yard]

There is a certain common approach to industrial relations taken by both TPE and Avanti, leading to a very strong reaction from ASLEF (see links below).

Transpennine Express: Setting the Record Straight | ASLEF

Mick Whelan, General Secretary, has spoken out after the rail company sent a misleading letter to stakeholders

aslef.org.uk

Avanti West Coast: Government Rewards Abject Failure | ASLEF

ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, slammed a decision today by the Department for Transport to extend the contract of Avanti West Coast for a further six months.

aslef.org.uk

Both as a result of directions by the DfT. IR policy and those statements issued by TOCs are really from the DfT.

LNER is OLR rather than direct DfT control and they have been relatively free from DfT direction up until recent times. But the DfT noose is now tightening on all the OLR TOCs.

 

[VauxhallNova]

I'm sure many on here can talk about ASLEFs longstanding issues with TPE, with withdrawal of rest day work being an issue prior to the 2016 franchise. Then they had issues throughout 2018 and 2019.

I'm not sure DfT can take the blame EVERY time...

Transpennine Express cancellations from Liverpool

This morning (Sat 27 Feb) three of the early long-distance Transpennine Express services from Liverpool were cancelled - the 0612 and 0812 to Newcastle, and the 0922 to Scarborough. Later, the 1212 to Newcastle and the 1222 to Scarborough were also cancelled. TPE are blaming driver shortages...

www.railforums.co.uk

Obviously slightly off topic, but all the TPE threads get closed due to going over the same traincrew issues again and again.

 

[Clarence Yard]

What happened to any TOC pre 2020 is just history. All the owning groups walked away from their previous franchise obligations in 2020, for a price in a lot of cases. All previous muck ups then became the responsibility of the DfT, who have not done enough to sort all the issues out or sort them out in a timely manner. COVID and the current IR position has, of course, made those situations more difficult to resolve. In some TOCs the DfT have actively made the position worse.

If you read a significant TOC statement these days, that’s a DfT statement that they have either required the TOC to put out or agreed to be put out. Any change to staff pay and conditions has to go through the DfT and in some cases the DfT are pushing that change onto the TOCs. ASLEF can write what they want but the Owning Groups are not in the driving seat anymore and are currently being paid millions to doing the DfT’s bidding and keeping relatively quiet.

So in the case of Avanti, the DfT have agreed a detailed recovery plan, signed off on a number of staff and if Avanti keep to those staff levels and that recovery plan, they are likely to pick up a lucrative NRC as a reward.

 

[jfollows]

Private Eye's view (Issue 1595, 31 March - 20 April 2023) on the contract extension is hardly supportive of the government, it observes that if (when?) Avanti gets a National Rail Contract before the next election it will be to frustrate attempts by the next Labour government to renationalise the railways:

SIGNAL FAILURES

West coast rap

MPs from across the House who were aghast to hear that lamentable Avanti West Coast has had its contract extended clearly don’t understood that fixing the rail network is less important to the government than frustrating any possible renationalisation by a future Labour government.

AWC is a byword for misery on the west coast mainline (London Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead and Glasgow). Despite slashing timetables last August, it also continued cancelling masses of trains and not releasing tickets for sale on time.

When AWC’s contract expired in October, the government didn’t call in its in-house rail firm (which runs a far better service on the east coast mainline out of London King’s Cross). Instead it gave AWC six months “to drastically improve services” while it finalised a munificent “national rail contract” (NRC) for AWC.

AWC hasn’t drastically improved services, yet the government has agreed another six-month extension - AWC’s reward for making the west coast ****show slightly less dire than last year. After this extension there’s still time for another, if necessary, before AWC gets that NRC, which must be signed off before the general election that Labour looks odds-on to win.

“Labour propose to spend billions of taxpayers’ money buying out the private sector, which would only serve to entrench the systemic problems of the railway,” transport secretary Mark Harper scoffed in February, knowing those costs (and systemic problems) stem from the Tories’ own prioritisation of private profit.

Halting the rolling-stock racket - which inflated annual train-leasing costs by 55 percent to £3.1bn in just four years (Eye 1593) - is where Labour would need megabucks for a buyout. But nationalising ex-franchises when their contracts expire would avoid buyouts and save money, starting with scrapping the bureaucratic competitions (costing millions of pounds each) for new contracts.

There isn’t time before the election to run new competitions. Instead the government is dishing out NRCs to existing firms behind closed doors. The NRC for East Midlands Railway lasts for up to eight years, as will one for Arriva’s miserable CrossCountry service. Thus the Tories are stitching up contracts to outlast the next parliament.

It’s reminiscent of their rush to privatise all of British Rail before the expected Labour landslide in 1997, when Labour had committed to a publicly owned railway. In government, Labour was even keener than the Tories on outsourcing. Ominously, Keir Starmer’s Labour hasn’t given details of the rail renationalisation it announced at the last party conference. Current Tory tactics could deliver just the excuse Labour needs to put the private sector ahead of passengers and taxpayers, yet again.

PS: FirstGroup, AWC’s main owner, reckons “performance at Avanti is steadily improving”. Steadily? On 27 January AWC warned passengers to expect “a large number of cancellations” the following day. Three days earlier, rail regulators said AWC’s “position has deteriorated in 2023”, demanding to know “what has gone wrong” and how AWC would enable passengers to plan journeys with more confidence.

‘Dr B Ching’

I do think, though, that the service delivered by Avanti has improved significantly, mainly as an observer rather than a traveller, and this improvement is mainly reflected in many comments on this forum. They're heading back to where they were - which is significantly worse than when Virgin left the scene because of Avanti's poor attitude towards passengers and their requirements and expectations.

 

[Mountain Man]

Prices are ridiculous & the last 3 times I booked Avanti they have either been delayed or cancelled. Can’t beat a £4.90 coach ticket

You'd need to pay me a lot more than 4.90 to catch a long distance coach in the UK.

 

[VauxhallNova]

The Private Eye view is 100% consistent with my understanding.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The Private Eye piece is all very well bashing private TOCs and Avanti/TPE in particular.
But Labour have never said they will nationalise the whole railway, only the passenger services (by not re-letting TOC contracts when they expire).
In current parlance that would progressively put more contracts with OLR or other DfT body.
That still leaves rolling stock, freight and open access in private hands, also manufacturing and signalling, and any change there would be deemed "anti-business" so is unlikely to happen.

Current legislation requires rail services to be outsourced to the private sector, and direct awards are a way of doing this with least effort (no wasteful competitions).
The TOC contracts will evolve to NRCs, which are in readiness for the as-yet-undefined GBR structure.
GBR, as proposed by the Torys, won't eliminate private sector involvement in TOCs, and might require the outsourcing of current OLR TOCs.
Scotland and Wales, far from having permanently "re-nationalised" their TOCs, are still subject to the UK outsourcing/OLR legislation.
Labour are likely to face this new GBR legislation if/when they come to power, and as in 1997 will have to decide whether to live with it or do something different.
Remember the mantra in 1997 - "rail is not a priority".

 

[Clarence Yard]

Not quite. The proposed legislation would enable GBR to run services themselves, “under certain circumstances”.

There is some clever thought by the DfT going into this. So far, they are proposing to retain the power to be able to tell GBR whether to outsource or not, so an incoming Labour Government could just vary the policy and that would be that.

Shapps was saying one thing but his civil servants were doing another. He was too thick to see he was being stitched up!

 

[jayah]

Not quite. The proposed legislation would enable GBR to run services themselves, “under certain circumstances”.

There is some clever thought by the DfT going into this. So far, they are proposing to retain the power to be able to tell GBR whether to outsource or not, so an incoming Labour Government could just vary the policy and that would be that.

Shapps was saying one thing but his civil servants were doing another. He was too thick to see he was being stitched up!

Proof then that the civil service is frustrating government policy and working to its own agenda.

Which is consistently denied by senior civil servants whenever the question is raised.

 

[43066]

Proof then that the civil service is frustrating government policy and working to its own agenda.

Which is consistently denied by senior civil servants whenever the question is raised.

Hardly. Any future government will have carte blanch to do whatever it wishes with GBR in the future, in any event.

 

[Clarence Yard]

What civil servants do is allow themselves flexibility so they will always follow current policy but have one eye firmly fixed on the possible future.

What politicians are bad at is seeing what their civil servants are really up to or if they do suss it, they don’t particularly mind because it gives them the space to change things if Plan A doesn’t work out.

It’s a very cynical business, whether you are a civil servant or a politician.

 

[Krokodil]

Hardly. Any future government will have carte blanch to do whatever it wishes with GBR in the future, in any event.

So long as Sir Humphrey doesn't filibuster whatever they plan to do.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

So long as Sir Humphrey doesn't filibuster whatever they plan to do.

I imagine civil servants look more closely at the legal niceties than politicians do.
The Brexit sunset bill may or may not allow DfT to abandon all the EU constraints we signed up to (Interoperability and the like), some of which frame the franchising scene.
Then there's whether all that applies to Wales and Scotland too, who want the powers devolved to them and not held in Whitehall.
Rewriting EU regulations could also take a lot of parliamentary time away from practical things like setting up GBR.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Not with the sunset bill. If it gets passed, a lot of the current railway regs will naturally die at the end of this year. They can be extended until 2026 at the latest, if the DfT (& parliament) want to.

The sunset bill provides for any amendment to be done through secondary legislation (Statutory Instruments), which takes next to no parliamentary time and very little parliamentary scrutiny so the smart money is on the DfT extending most of the regs and, when they have decided what to do, then dealing with them individually through the S.I. Procedure.

 

[VauxhallNova]

It's a very cynical business, whether you are a civil servant or a politician.

Or indeed a private company, cutting jobs and delivering a siht service, making millions off the taxpayer by taking no revenue or cost risk.

For all their many public pronouncements, "wanting to deliver a good service", for 90% of private companies, will always be secondary to the profit / cost incentive.

I suppose it depends on your interpretation of "cynical".

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

LNER are, as far as I’m concerned, the best TOC operating in the UK at present.

Their customer service, communication, and reliability are much better than other intercity TOC’s!

Indeed I took a journey on Avanti today in first class and the service was extremely disappointing (1 food service and 2 drinks services from Carlisle to Euston hardly justifies a huge premium from SP to first! Lucky I was on an interrail and would be travelling first anyway!)

LNER‘s service seems much more consistent, a real key in assessing the reliability of a TOC! Punctuality generally good, first class service is pretty much identical regardless of service, and you always know what to expect. I don’t think the same can be said of any other intercity UK TOC!

Well that just goes to show how different two people’s experiences can be, doesn’t it. Unless they’ve changed dramatically in the two months since moving to Australia, I found LNER to have be one of the worst customer service TOCs out there. Several highly arrogant TMs I can think of and a good deal of condescending London based hosts. Then again, when you compare to Euston or St Pancras gateline…

First class service is absolutely not identical regardless of service unless they’ve ditched the sham Deli menu and altered breakfast so that you no longer get a full English if going south but a single bacon roll (and from what I’ve seen, a patronising remark if you ask for something more filling going north.

I’m delighted you’ve had good experiences with LNER lately but I don’t want to look on them with rose-tinted glasses even if Avanti are very bad these days.

 

[jayah]

Hardly. Any future government will have carte blanch to do whatever it wishes with GBR in the future, in any event.

The Civil Service is meant to be independent of party politics and exists to implement the policy of the elected government, not to covertly further the position of HM Opposition.

In public at least, those principles are defended vehemently at the very highest level.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Or indeed a private company, cutting jobs and delivering a siht service, making millions off the taxpayer by taking no revenue or cost risk.

For all their many public pronouncements, "wanting to deliver a good service", for 90% of private companies, will always be secondary to the profit / cost incentive.

I suppose it depends on your interpretation of "cynical".

I agree, I was just referring to the wheels of Government, not the private sector.

If you are in the private sector, you are there to satisfy your shareholders by maximising your revenue at least cost. In the case of the DfT TOCs it is all about maximising your fees and if they are not entirely service related, you are going to go for those elements that give you the most return for the least effort,nwhich is what is happening.

In the current circumstances it is hard to see what real benefit the private sector (either in OLR or the OGs) is bringing to the rail industry. With this level of DfT control, Regional GBR TOCs seem a more logical and far cheaper solution.

 

[Meerkat]

In the current circumstances it is hard to see what real benefit the private sector (either in OLR or the OGs) is bringing to the rail industry. With this level of DfT control, Regional GBR TOCs seem a more logical and far cheaper solution.

As long as you can keep retendering costs under control then recompeting the TOCs is the competition that keeps the costs from escalating so much.