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Terrible incompetence. Need to fire the managing director, Nicholas Donovan and his replacement Chief Operating Officer Tricia Williams.
Shouldn't be seeing this so late in the day. Should have been an emergency timetable finalised several weeks ago.
WARNING: DO NOT TRAVEL. DO NOT GO HOME. DO NOT CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS. HANDS FACE SPACE, WERE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, STOP THE BOATS, SEND THE RAILWAY MANAGEMENT TO RWANDA.
It’s a bit difficult when this all happens in the week leading up. Staff will have seen the 7 Day markup issued over the weekend for next Sunday, and chucked in their job. All processed early this week by resource teams, timescales are what they are. By the time you’ve done assurance, planning, approvals etc, doing that within a week is good going.
Northern aren’t the only TOC in the dumps here, and it’s not “their” fault. Fault really lies with antiquated Sunday working arrangements.
Plan in advance, and offer proper incentives (which might well need to be more than £100 - maybe treble or quadruple time). That way they’d likely have a much smaller shortfall. Better still bring Sundays into the working week to prevent future occurrences.
I realise that probably wouldn't be permitted by the DfT under the current arrangements, as we know they would rather make small savings now, even if it causes the railway to become unreliable and utterly useless to passengers.
Indeed in NR,when i was still there, we would pay out 500-1k/shift to contractors for working Xmas & Boxing day and that was 1000's of people across the network. They also had to sign up by early December as well so we new we had sufficient resources otherwise job would get pulled. In this case Northern should have realised weeks ago where this was headed and certainly pulled advance ticket sales and probably cancelled down services then as well. Alternatively i agree that when you have no obligation to work then an inducement needs to be offered given the day of the year but can see DafT just saying you lot at Northern are costing us a fortune already so we aint paying anymore so.
Plenty of NHS staff, to take one example, work seven day a week contracts, with no expectation for particular days of the week to be treated as overtime. The rail industry is simply in the past and in the wrong.
Plenty of NHS staff, to take one example, work seven day a week contracts, with no expectation for particular days of the week to be treated as overtime. The rail industry is simply in the past and in the wrong.
Actually you’ll find many NHS functions almost shut down at weekends, and AIUI many NHS staff are also paid an enhanced rate for Sundays and public holidays.
Back on topic, as already explained above (and many, many times before), the current arrangements on the railway are in place because they’re what has suited the employers historically. Sundays not being treated as overtime would mean bringing them inside the working week (which the unions want) but would require more staff and more cost.
The current arrangements can be managed to prevent the service being affected, as @Nicholas Lewis has expanded on above, but the failure here seems to be with Northern not managing the situation effectively, and not providing enough of an incentive.
I hope Burnham and the ‘nationalisation is a magic solution brigade’ are tucking in to some humble pie.
Rail operators should have a compensation regime similar to airlines. Even if your ticket only cost £10, if an airline cancels your flight due to reasons within their control (eg staff shortages) they have to feed you and, if necessary, put you in a hotel plus you could get compensation running into hundreds of pounds. For train companies to wash their hands of people that have paid for tickets weeks in advance, offering no alternatives and nothing more than a refund is completely unacceptable.
One thing I've noticed in my little corner of the railway, as someone who has to arrange cover for sickness out-of-hours as an on call manager, is that staff are generally a lot more reluctant to do overtime shifts than they used to be twenty years ago. Willingness to work overtime was gradually reducing over the last ten years but has plummeted off a cliff since Covid. In 2003 you would always find someone to cover a shift at short notice but these days it's usually touch and go, as person after person either doesn't answer their phone or turns it down flat. There are still a few greedy grabbers who would cheerfully sell their own grandparents for a 12 hour Sunday but for the most part a lot of staff aren't really bothered for overtime and would rather just have their days off instead.
Years ago railwaymen in the wages grades needed to work a few rest days or Sundays to bulk up their payslip at the end of the month but as railway industry wages have increased the relative value of overtime has decreased - quite simply a lot of staff don't see the point when most of their overtime money goes to the tax man. I think that Covid made people realise that there's more to life than working. In particular, quality time with the family around christmas has a value greater than money.
The solution to this problem is to bring Sunday inside the working week. This, of course, would require increased staff numbers and a significant pay increase so it's very unlikely to happen under this government!
I find overtime a pretty toxic issue. I have a position of “don’t do overtime”, which has led to quite a few attempts to have my arm twisted.
I was recently badgered about doing an hour’s overtime to cover an operational matter. Which I declined, and I was then asked how much would I want in order to do it, to which I replied “infinity”. I’m not sure which part of “I don’t do overtime” was proving hard to understand.
First and foremost the industry needs to resource itself properly. Relying on overtime simply opens up numerous can of worms. But it doesn’t help that the industry likes it as it allows fewer staff to be on the books, and some staff like it as they can supplement their income - when it suits.
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Excuse me? Just using myself as an example, I have turned up to work every day this year when I’ve been contractually required to. But don’t expect me to turn up on my days off.
As for the rest of the working population turning up for work, that’s certainly a matter for debate since 2020.
Part of the reason it hasn’t been dealt with is because the industry hasn’t wanted to deal with it. The current arrangements suit because it allows having fewer staff on the books, with a consequential significant saving on all the overheads which come with that.
More generally, do we really think this government gives a stuff about people wanting to make journeys on Sundays?
1) Negotiate with the unions to bring Sundays inside the working week. Or, since the Treasury would likely veto the required increase in headcount, something more feasible might involve committed Sundays.
2) As the number of volunteers shows, offering £100 a couple of days in advance - once management is in a blind panic - is effectively urinating in the wind. Make that £200 or £300 and announce it a month beforehand and you might start getting somewhere.
3) Of course I'll undoubtedly be told that the DfT's budget won't even allow for the (comparatively small) cost of such a bonus - in which case the decision maker in Northern's management should have bothered to take a look at their 2023 calendar at some point in the last 12 months.
At that point they might have realised that the 24th and 31st are both Sundays and both the day before major Bank Holidays. They should then have made the difficult decision to reduce the service on those days to a more realistic level, and to order a limited service of replacement buses for stations that would otherwise go unserved together with arranging ticket acceptance for ones served by other operators.
4) Next you'll tell me that option 3) would require offering the market rate for Christmas/New Year's Eve RRBs. We can't be doing with that, can we!
In which case - the absolute bare minimum would be for Northern to:
Cancel services in good time, at the latest when engineering work changes are published. That way people would know what to expect.
Arrange ticket acceptance with other operators and make sure their staff are briefed.
Publish an assurance on their website etc. that they'll try their best to arrange alternative transport for anyone who's making a journey not possible using ticket acceptance, that holds a ticket valid for the 24th and which was bought before the cancellations were published - e.g. annual season ticket holders.
Publish an assurance that if they're unable to arrange alternative transport, anyone who has to make their own arrangements will be quickly reimbursed.
Of course, Northern have done none of those things. They've not even bothered to do the bare minimum.
The reality is they don't really care. They know they'll get away with telling people to get lost at 1.5 days' notice because they know the ORR and press won't be asking questions. They know there's no contract they can lose, since they're already the Operator of Last Resort. And they know the public won't be surprised at the railway letting them down again.
Rail operators should have a compensation regime similar to airlines. Even if your ticket only cost £10, if an airline cancels your flight due to reasons within their control (eg staff shortages) they have to feed you and, if necessary, put you in a hotel plus you could get compensation running into hundreds of pounds. For train companies to wash their hands of people that have paid for tickets weeks in advance, offering no alternatives and nothing more than a refund is completely unacceptable.
The same obligations for providing alternative transport and/or accommodation apply to TOCs such as Northern, but sadly you'll probably have to (threaten to) go to Court to get what you're owed.
This is absolutely correct. At my depot just 3 conductors have agreed to work ...... leaving some 90% of jobs uncovered. It also appears no one is interested in the £100 incentive
Any idiot (and there are plenty) who votes for the political donkeys who can’t be bothered to get a grip of Northern (and TPE) whilst bleating on for YEARS like rabid sheep about how much they ‘care’ about the north is an ass.
The management of Northern seem to have given up long ago. Instead of attention to running a train service we loads of ridiculous PR guff and railway Russian Roulette day in day out. I am genuinely surprised if I have an uneventful journey with Northern these days. I rank it below the railway system my 2 year old nephew attempts to run on my sister’s carpet in terms of sophistication, reliability and an expression of adults being adult.
It is a shame that the drivers and guards can’t do the poor bloody passenger a favour and say, look management, this is stupid, let’s work something out on this of all days. A bit of goodwill to all men could surely have meant a reliable hourly service on all routes.
…. But nobody cares do they. It’s all absolutely always somebody else’s fault. All the bloody time it is somebody else’s fault.
And for those who are saying it is the perfect storm - no it isn’t. It is nothing of the sort. It is Sunday the 24th December 2023. Something so predictable in planning terms that you could have quite literally predicted it from the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in October 1582.
Why all this talk about "facing down" & "forcing" , nothing meaningful would ever come from employers at the behest of the government attempting to force through detrimental changes to contracts of people working in the industry without suitable compensation . We all know what people mean when they use rhetoric like that , they mean force them to work their sundays for no extra premium , the unions have seen managers/officials and politicians attempting that come and go without achieving anything over the years .
Surely a better ambition is for a negotiated change to working arrangements , especially given the two main unions in the industry are totally in favour of bringing sundays inside the working week .
I think many on this forum show a level of naivety in thinking that the people in the industry that work to these terms and conditions don't see the issues , but also how many people if presented with a choice over working christmas eve would elect to do so .
Part of the reason it hasn’t been dealt with is because the industry hasn’t wanted to deal with it. The current arrangements suit because it allows having fewer staff on the books, with a consequential significant saving on all the overheads which come with that.
Quite , Sunday always used to be popular for engineering works leading to routes being closed , having sundays as non contractual overtime meant that people could be told their sundays were cancelled at a weeks notice . Of course that unfortuantely goes both ways .
Now with the better than expected recovery of leisure travel on a saturday the ambition now is to shift some of that demand to sundays which doesn't correlate with the current working practices , of course some might argue the government has attempted "reform" but faced opposition from the union/staff . But the truth is the government has packaged reform to sunday working arrangements up with a load of other things that they knew wouldn't be accepted in a onc size fits all deal for all TOC's , if the DFT really wanted to do a deal on just sundays at Northern I am sure with the right will and some negotiation they could get something over the line .
Any idiot (and there are plenty) who votes for the political donkeys who can’t be bothered to get a grip of Northern (and TPE) whilst bleating on for YEARS like rabid sheep about how much they ‘care’ about the north is an ass.
The management of Northern seem to have given up long ago. Instead of attention to running a train service we loads of ridiculous PR guff and railway Russian Roulette day in day out. I am genuinely surprised if I have an uneventful journey with Northern these days. I rank it below the railway system my 2 year old nephew attempts to run on my sister’s carpet in terms of sophistication, reliability and an expression of adults being adult.
It is a shame that the drivers and guards can’t do the poor bloody passenger a favour and say, look management, this is stupid, let’s work something out on this of all days. A bit of goodwill to all men could surely have meant a reliable hourly service on all routes.
…. But nobody cares do they. It’s all absolutely always somebody else’s fault. All the bloody time it is somebody else’s fault.
It really actually isn’t the staff’s fault if they don’t wish to work overtime.
And, frankly, who would really want to go the extra mile after the way this government has carried on. How many times did Liz Truss mention rail unions in her third/final PMQs? Quite some nerve after the carnage she caused.
The population will have their chance to give a verdict on all this at some point next year. Unfortunately this could also come with some unfortunate side-effects.
Why all this talk about "facing down" & "forcing" , nothing meaningful would ever come from employers at the behest of the government attempting to force through detrimental changes to contracts of people working in the industry without suitable compensation . We all know what people mean when they use rhetoric like that , they mean force them to work their sundays for no extra premium , the unions have seen managers/officials and politicians attempting that come and go without achieving anything over the years .
Surely a better ambition is for a negotiated change to working arrangements , especially given the two main unions in the industry are totally in favour of bringing sundays inside the working week .
I think many on this forum show a level of naivety in thinking that the people in the industry that work to these terms and conditions don't see the issues , but also how many people if presented with a choice over working christmas eve would elect to do so .
Quite , Sunday always used to be popular for engineering works leading to routes being closed , having sundays as non contractual overtime meant that people could be told their sundays were cancelled at a weeks notice . Of course that unfortuantely goes both ways .
Now with the better than expected recovery of leisure travel on a saturday the ambition now is to shift some of that demand to sundays which doesn't correlate with the current working practices , of course some might argue the government has attempted "reform" but faced opposition from the union/staff . But the truth is the government has packaged reform to sunday working arrangements up with a load of other things that they knew wouldn't be accepted in a onc size fits all deal for all TOC's , if the DFT really wanted to do a deal on just sundays at Northern I am sure with the right will and some negotiation they could get something over the line .
The Sunday problem predates the current shift in usage patterns by many, many years. There has never been a moment where more than a couple of routes have been closed for engineering across the northern network on a Sunday. These are not excuses for not having this sorted by now.
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It really actually isn’t the staff’s fault if they don’t wish to work overtime.
And, frankly, who would really want to go the extra mile after the way this government has carried on. How many times did Liz Truss mention rail unions in her third/final PMQs? Quite some nerve after the carnage she caused.
The population will have their chance to give a verdict on all this at some point next year. Unfortunately this could also come with some unfortunate side-effects.
Well any of those staff that voted for these idiots should not complain about the entirely inevitable drivel that pounces forth from their gibberish generators. Statistically, some of the culprits for this absolute bunch of amateurs being in power for such a hideous amount of time must be in railway industry.
The Sunday problem predates the current shift in usage patterns by many, many years. There has never been a moment where more than a couple of routes have been closed for engineering across the northern network on a Sunday. These are not excuses for not having this sorted by now.
The increase in demand for Sunday services has been the case for some years now, and definitely pre-dates Covid. For example it’s been a good decade and more since shops tended to be closed Sundays. Ironically, there’s still plenty of quite important functions which have very limited weekend functionality - banking being one, and none other than the NHS being another example.
Well any of those staff that voted for these idiots should not complain about the entirely inevitable drivel that pounces forth from their gibberish generators. Statistically, some of the culprits for this absolute bunch of amateurs being in power for such a hideous amount of time must be in railway industry.
Regardless of political views, I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected this government to have degenerated and sunk to the extent they have. Even John Major’s turbulent government was an absolute dream by comparison. Okay Covid was an unfortunate external event, but their handling of it was abysmal, and we are now left picking up the pieces.
Two things immediately spring to mind. Firstly I’m not sure there’s an appetite for a landslide election result, but there’s a possibility that’s what we’ll get (especially bearing in mind recent by-election trends, though of course these aren’t always representative of what might happen at a general election).
Secondly the non-stop chaos in the Conservative Party has meant Labour, as well as everyone else, has received very little scrutiny.
If one thinks about it, this is actually a rather dangerous combination.
What are you getting at here? There are plenty of practical suggestions in this thread already, including arranging replacement buses and ticket acceptance with Transport for Wales.
Not sure there are enough replacement buses in the North West of England to cover this, and ticket acceptance with TfW would cover only a fraction of the problem.
Easy enough to achieve by offering existing staff the choice to bring Sundays inside (for a commensurate pensionable pay rise), with those who choose not to continuing as they are, but with all new joiners having them inside by default. That was the solution agreed and implemented by my TOC and it works well.
Indeed in NR,when i was still there, we would pay out 500-1k/shift to contractors for working Xmas & Boxing day and that was 1000's of people across the network.
It’s fair to say that there are many TOCs in difficulty for tomorrow across the network, not just Northern and WMT. But then many TOCs are in difficulty for most Sundays, but manage to fill the roster in the weeks and days beforehand. This time they haven‘t.
The current problem is 2 fold. Some people never want to work Sundays. Others like the overtime and would be in the position of a pay cut if they were in the week without a salary increase.
Staff - "My Sundays are worth (let's say as an example) 3 grand a year to me. I want 3 grand a year on my salary or maybe a little more than that so I'm not losing out by giving you additional flexibility.
Railway/Government - "we'd really rather you accept the change for nothing, actually".
Sunday not being part of the working week (for some toc’s and grades) and a low incentive for some grades not to work, some drivers in toc’s get £500 for an additional shift, need a 7 day a week roster not this, how this has been allowed to continue is beyond me, people who don’t want to work overtime are beholden to the ones that do or the ones that want to pick and choose when they want to work when their colleagues have to come in and work for no more.
Staff - "My Sundays are worth (let's say as an example) 3 grand a year to me. I want 3 grand a year on my salary or maybe a little more than that so I'm not losing out by giving you additional flexibility.
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This is where is gets messy for some, Sundays aren't part of the working week (outside of the basic flat pensionable weekly hours), it's flat time yet you're contractually obliged to work them? How is that even possible? It's not pensionable as they're outside of the working week but they can be taken away at anytime (in theory) yet they have to be worked, how unions agreed to that is beyond me.
You need to stop thinking of Northern as a big version of a self-isolated system like Metrolink. It's more like a road network where Northern provide the B roads, TPE and XC provide the A roads and Avanti provide the Motorway. Why do you think ASLEF called different strike days for Northern and Avanti recently? If Northern don't provide their part of their network, it affects revenue for other operators as well.
You need to stop thinking of Northern as a big version of a self-isolated system like Metrolink. It's more like a road network where Northern provide the B roads, TPE and XC provide the A roads and Avanti provide the Motorway. Why do you think ASLEF called different strike days for Northern and Avanti recently? If Northern don't provide their part of their network, it affects revenue for other operators as well.
One for a different thread perhaps, but should the WCML (and for that matter the ECML) run more like GWR so that the local trains are provided by the same company?
There will always be overlaps (CrossCountry, TPE and TfW) in the case of the WCML, but reduced overlaps would limit the extent to which part failure (in this case the local connections) causes damage to the other part.
Down in the South West, CrossCountry and GWR were off at the same time.
What are you getting at here? There are plenty of practical suggestions in this thread already, including arranging replacement buses and ticket acceptance with Transport for Wales.
For the normal tax rate (which I presume guards are on) around 30% would be deducted for tax and NI. Any additional deductions would either be going into the employee's personal workplace pension, or would be repaying a student loan, although I don't expect many rail workers would be repaying a student loan.
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I think Burnham has the defence that it's the wrong political party controlling the railways. He doesn't want the Tories running the railways, anymore than Arriva.
The solution to this problem is to bring Sunday inside the working week. This, of course, would require increased staff numbers and a significant pay increase so it's very unlikely to happen under this government!
The only sure way to ensure a reliable Sunday service is indeed to make the day part of the working week, however no Government of any colour has achieved this; Sundays were overtime shifts when I joined BR in 1978, and still were when I retired from NR in 2016! The issue, as mentioned, is that it would increase the cost of running the railway, even if staff accepted a reduction in take home pay thanks to losing the extra cash for Sundays. As always, who is going to pay?
It is / would be one thing to announce no trains and no RRBs due engineering works 3 or 4 months in advance. Not ideal, but people get their chance to make their plans round it. To say. 2 days in advance that there will be no trains because there are no staff available is a completely different kettle of fish.
Explain how they can implement on Sundays if they are voluntary & not part of the working week.
Drivers have until 17:00 on Weds to make themselves available/unavailable for Sunday work depending as to whether they have a booked turn or not. So if they have a booked turn they make themselves unavailable if they don’t want to work. And if they have no turn they make themselves available if they wish to work.
it’s up to the driver if they want to work on my company thankfully. In my case I’m permanently not available for Sundays
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I do, I work my contracted hours and any overtime required as part of that contract (ie movement off spare turns). As in instructor i also do a lot of paperwork in my own time for which admittedly we get a small annual payment for. But why should i have to work non contractual days be they Sundays or rest days.
My wife works in the NHS again she quite rightly only works her contracted hours. As regards the NHS working 7 days yes it does but with a much reduced service over the weekends & during the night but to compare the railways to the nhs is rather silly and i won’t repeat what my wife (a nurse practitioner) said.
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Maybe we should go back to the Sunday service we had when i started 40 years ago. No trains until late morning/lunchtime to allow for engineering works. And Christmas Eve, whether a Sunday or not service were wound down by 8pm.
It is / would be one thing to announce no trains and no RRBs due engineering works 3 or 4 months in advance. Not ideal, but people get their chance to make their plans round it. To say. 2 days in advance that there will be no trains because there are no staff available is a completely different kettle of fish.
Yeah and to be fair we don't generally hear passengers complaining that services end early on 24 Dec and 31 Dec, despite not being in printed/pdf timetables. They are in journey planners early enough for people to work around them. Now people have already planned their journeys for this weekend based on Northern providing a normal Sunday service until around 8pm.
It also wouldn't be as bad if Northern provided at least a couple of services on every line. It would result in a lot of Delay Repay claims, but most people could still get where they needed to be. As it is it seems Northern are providing a full/almost full service on some lines, and none on others.
I also wonder whether Northern have considered the value of the tickets that will be refunded. People using the stations in more affluent areas may well have purchased more expensive tickets. For example, someone from Levenshulme with relatives in Birmingham may be planning to switch to Megabus in Manchester and won't have purchased a train ticket yet, while someone from Knutsford or Hale might be planning to take the train all the way and already have a £60 return ticket.
It is reasonable for Northern not to run trains on Sundays (both Christmas Eve and at other times) should they wish to do so, if it is not a statutory part of their employees' working week. Only limited bus services operate on Sundays, and generally not in rural counties.
What is less acceptable is for Northern to give only short notice of this intention, as they publish a timetable with relatively extensive Sunday services.
Northern have been late cancelling on Sundays for ages now due to people not wanting to work overtime on Sundays, some weekends theres more services than others. The last northern LIV to WAC tomorrow is now 1525 when I think it was 1925 previously.
The increase in demand for Sunday services has been the case for some years now, and definitely pre-dates Covid. For example it’s been a good decade and more since shops tended to be closed Sundays. Ironically, there’s still plenty of quite important functions which have very limited weekend functionality - banking being one, and none other than the NHS being another example.
Regardless of political views, I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected this government to have degenerated and sunk to the extent they have. Even John Major’s turbulent government was an absolute dream by comparison. Okay Covid was an unfortunate external event, but their handling of it was abysmal, and we are now left picking up the pieces.
Two things immediately spring to mind. Firstly I’m not sure there’s an appetite for a landslide election result, but there’s a possibility that’s what we’ll get (especially bearing in mind recent by-election trends, though of course these aren’t always representative of what might happen at a general election).
Secondly the non-stop chaos in the Conservative Party has meant Labour, as well as everyone else, has received very little scrutiny.
If one thinks about it, this is actually a rather dangerous combination.
I disagree on not being able to predict the Government would not have descended to where it was. People in the north who voted for them in the last election had ample warning that the following things were true:
- they are a disorganised chaotic bunch of self-interested, often actively corrupt, often lying, often bullying, often disgustingly over-privileged twerps,
- they had already cancelled their own promised key upgrades to northern infrastructure upgrade plans
-they had developed an approach to ruling by a terrible mix of arrogant instruction from the centre mixed with no concept of understanding of or attention to detail
- it was incredibly clear that their pretended affection for the north was very much less than skin deep, treating their own newly elected northern MP’s and constituencies as something to handled at arms length, not properly understood and engaged with.
- their warped brains have decided the way to engage the average northern voter is to bang on about immigrants (whilst issuing more immigration visas than ever before in UK history x3), the tiny proportion of our population that is trans etc etc. It is borderline racist to northerners who tend to be kind, compassionate people who are a lot more interested in societal improvement and renewal including having a decent, reliable train service.
All of this has directly affected rail in the north. DfT mismanaging pretty much everything, the northern franchise staying as broadly the same basket case it was when they came in - if not more unreliable, TPE and absolute disaster, HS2 cancelled, northern powerhouse rail as nebulous as the day they promised it, absolutely no sense of the north moving towards the integrated transport system it has needed for decades and many, many European regions enjoy.
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It is reasonable for Northern not to run trains on Sundays (both Christmas Eve and at other times) should they wish to do so, if it is not a statutory part of their employees' working week. Only limited bus services operate on Sundays, and generally not in rural counties.
What is less acceptable is for Northern to give only short notice of this intention, as they publish a timetable with relatively extensive Sunday services.
If most railway crews are happy with the only open places on Sundays being churches and newsagents. If they want shops, pubs, restaurants and visitor attractions to be open, they need to provide a public transport service to allow workers to get to those places.
Anyway, disputing whether staff should or shouldn't work Sundays doesn't excuse Northern's approach. If train operators continue down that route, then it may be services get reduced rail staff are left with a choice of redundancies, reduced hours or having to work Sundays to keep the same number of hours. If there's bad relations between the operator and the passengers, the staff will suffer whether it's their fault or not.
It is reasonable for Northern not to run trains on Sundays (both Christmas Eve and at other times) should they wish to do so, if it is not a statutory part of their employees' working week. Only limited bus services operate on Sundays, and generally not in rural counties.
What is less acceptable is for Northern to give only short notice of this intention, as they publish a timetable with relatively extensive Sunday services.
I disagree. If Arriva still had the franchise and their contract required them to run services on 24 December, would people accept that Arriva can choose whether or not they actually provide the contracted service?
If Northern were proposing at least 50% of scheduled services on all routes, plus replacement buses to cover any long gaps or cancelled first/last trains then it may still be annoying for passengers but they wouldn't end up being stranded or having to fork out for taxis/nights in hotels.
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