Delighted that ORR haven't caved in. NR & the TOCs need to adequately resource all teams involved with engineering works planning so they consistently deliver this now.
This main benefit to TOCs would have been moving away from the December TT change which is a pain to manage in terms of finishing the TT and then bidding Special Traffic Plans for the Christmas New Year Period.
The majority of the benefits fell to NR, in my view, and those outside of operators and NR including the DfT where an LTP timetable could be changed three times a year rather than twice (about every 17 weeks or so), it meant T-12 compliance needed to fall to T-8 weeks giving punters less notice of engineering works and consequential timetable changes. To me this is folly as we should be pushing out the notice period and not reducing it to meet the requirements of the leisure user who can book tickets for concerts, shows, sporting events and hotels etc possibly upto a year out.
