TOC contract expiry dates

[Goldfish62]

Then the Government cannot complain about woeful Sunday services at certain operators. There is literally not another option to resolve it.

OK.

 

[weeklycommuter]

Royal Assent scheduled for tomorrow. I wonder if there will be any news on plans for terminating TOC contracts afterwards?

Royal Assent for the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is currently showing as House of Lords Business at 11:00 am on Thursday 28 November 2024

https://whatson.parliament.uk/lords/2024-11-28

https://whatson.parliament.uk/event/cal49766

https://lordsbusiness.parliament.uk/?businessPaperDate=2024-11-28

 

[Djgr]

What will change? Trains will be same, staff will be the same, majority of day to day mgt will still be there. You might get new uniform and a change of identity but whats the point of that just more wasted money.

OLR have proven themselves inept over Northern although the long arm of DfT interference probably hasn't helped. No more operators should be moved until shadow GBR has been setup and has its senior leadership team in place. The reason being is we need to head off in anew direction now if we are to seriously turn a corner over the poor state the industry has got itself in since Covid.

The poor state of the industry was baked into its DNA at the time of privatisation. So many people tried to stop it but the naive and those after a quick buck won.

 

[SWT_USER]

Then the Government cannot complain about woeful Sunday services at certain operators. There is literally not another option to resolve it.

How long have First been running the GWML? 20+ years? That's how long they've had to bring Sunday in to the working week and not done it. Seems fair for the government to blame the private operators in this case.

Not expecting anything to change quickly with GBR, but at least it is a change and I'm hopeful we will see benefits in the long run. Looking forward to seeing more details next week.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Even in franchise days, such changes in staff conditions needed DfT approval because of the continuing liability on the DfT (through the next franchise) after that particular franchise ended.

The DfT always wanted the cheaper option.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Presumably a new, national, set of terms and conditions for GBR will be devised and applicable to new entrants going forward - there is no shortage of applicants - and the old T & Cs will slowly wither on the vine. For certain grades, drivers in particular, they will go rather more quickly for there is a big hump on the graph of staff coming up for retirement.

One of the ironies of privatisation - and the creation of 25 TOCs - was that it was intended to depress wages /salaries as it had done in the bus industry. The reverse, of course, happened with competitive bidding between TOCs.

 

[dk1]

Presumably a new, national, set of terms and conditions for GBR will be devised and applicable to new entrants going forward - there is no shortage of applicants - and the old T & Cs will slowly wither on the vine. For certain grades, drivers in particular, they will go rather more quickly for there is a big hump on the graph of staff coming up for retirement.

One of the ironies of privatisation - and the creation of 25 TOCs - was that it was intended to depress wages /salaries as it had done in the bus industry. The reverse, of course, happened with competitive bidding between TOCs.

You have to remember that many of those who joined in the last few years as drivers and there have been lots of them are all on the current conditions. Even if any changes were accepted it’s going to be another 30-40 years before this lot go or agree to anything unless it’s very very lucrative to them.

 

[Belperpete]

What will change? Trains will be same, staff will be the same, majority of day to day mgt will still be there. You might get new uniform and a change of identity but whats the point of that just more wasted money.

One of the big problems of the current railway is its fragmented nature, with numerous TOCs often working in their narrow self-interest. Hopefully this will change when the TOCs are all under common control.

Hopefully, the waste involved in having multiple TOCs can be reduced. What will be the point in Delay Attribution, for example, when the trains are all run by GBR over GBR's network? And hopefully GBR won't be paying itself for disruption caused by its own engineering work - something that massively inflated the cost of engineering works and maintenance after privatisation. Which means that modernisation and improvement works should become more affordable.

 

[JamesT]

One of the big problems of the current railway is its fragmented nature, with numerous TOCs often working in their narrow self-interest. Hopefully this will change when the TOCs are all under common control.

Hopefully, the waste involved in having multiple TOCs can be reduced. What will be the point in Delay Attribution, for example, when the trains are all run by GBR over GBR's network? And hopefully GBR won't be paying itself for disruption caused by its own engineering work - something that massively inflated the cost of engineering works and maintenance after privatisation. Which means that modernisation and improvement works should become more affordable.

Delay Attribution started under BR. If you’re not tracking what’s causing failures, how do you expect to manage things?
I doubt the payments for disruption have a significant effect on the cost of engineering work. Nowhere near as significant as the massive construction cost inflation that’s widespread across the whole economy.
GBR is too large to be managed as a single monolithic entity. There are going to be divisions that may well have different priorities.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

One of the big problems of the current railway is its fragmented nature, with numerous TOCs often working in their narrow self-interest. Hopefully this will change when the TOCs are all under common control.

Hopefully, the waste involved in having multiple TOCs can be reduced. What will be the point in Delay Attribution, for example, when the trains are all run by GBR over GBR's network? And hopefully GBR won't be paying itself for disruption caused by its own engineering work - something that massively inflated the cost of engineering works and maintenance after privatisation. Which means that modernisation and improvement works should become more affordable.

Delay attribution will probably worse under GBR as you'll get the internal not from my budget and no overall commercial ramifications and not necessarily a commercial contract to refer to.

A lot of people think having one organisation will save costs but every large organisation I've worked for has been very tribal between departments.

 

[HerneHill]

Delay Attribution started under BR. If you’re not tracking what’s causing failures, how do you expect to manage things?

Quite right - the purpose of Delay Attribution will be to identify the correct root causes and fix them collaboratively, rather than finger-pointing and making a quick buck from compensation.

Delay attribution will probably worse under GBR as you'll get the internal not from my budget and no overall commercial ramifications

The way to prevent this from happening is to set the same KPIs for everyone which are based on reducing overall delays, not just delays attributable to one’s own fiefdom. We have a good crop of senior leaders in the industry right now with good levels of influence, and I’d like to think they’d get it right this time.

 

[Djgr]

Royal Assent for the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is currently showing as House of Lords Business at 11:00 am on Thursday 28 November 2024

I will be getting ready to crack open the bubbly!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Royal Assent for the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is currently showing as House of Lords Business at 11:00 am on Thursday 28 November 2024

Presumably this is just a statement of the fact by the Lords Speaker (Lord McFall).
Is this the first completed primary legislation of the new Labour government?

 

[physics34]

Probably slap on parliament tv for this later

 

[Goldfish62]

Is this the first completed primary legislation of the new Labour government?

I reckon so.

 

[thomalex]

We are supposed to be getting an announcement by Louise Haigh at some point today on a National Transport Strategy, so maybe some further details on GBR

 

[jackdoyle]

Presumably this is just a statement of the fact by the Lords Speaker (Lord McFall).
Is this the first completed primary legislation of the new Labour government?

It will be "I have to notify the house in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that His Majesty has signified his Royal Assent to the following Act. Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024". And then repeated by the speaker of the House of Commons.

There have been two Acts passed, neither anything too significant.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The deed was done at 1107 today.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Nov 2024 ==

We are supposed to be getting an announcement by Louise Haigh at some point today on a National Transport Strategy, so maybe some further details on GBR

Here's the speech, given in Leeds this morning.

Integrated National Transport Strategy

Announcing the launch of an Integrated National Transport Strategy.

www.gov.uk

Work on the strategy is just starting, to be published "in the spring".
Not much about GBR, except that the local Mayors will be part of its management process.

And today, I’m backing our Mayors across the country even further.
By confirming that they will be given a statutory role in governing, the managing, the planning and developing of Great British Railways network.
This will ensure our local leaders can create the right transport networks that deliver for local areas.

 

[OxtedSignaller]

Presumably a new, national, set of terms and conditions for GBR will be devised and applicable to new entrants going forward - there is no shortage of applicants - and the old T & Cs will slowly wither on the vine. For certain grades, drivers in particular, they will go rather more quickly for there is a big hump on the graph of staff coming up for retirement.

One of the ironies of privatisation - and the creation of 25 TOCs - was that it was intended to depress wages /salaries as it had done in the bus industry. The reverse, of course, happened with competitive bidding between TOCs.

This makes the most sense and surely is one of the benefits of having a unified system. At present it seems they're basically trying to replicate the franchising system but with the individual franchises simply owned by the government.

 

[irish_rail]

This makes the most sense and surely is one of the benefits of having a unified system. At present it seems they're basically trying to replicate the franchising system but with the individual franchises simply owned by the government.

That's my take on it too. Very disappointed that Labour's nationalisation appears to be privatisation in all but name. So many missed opportunities to create something great, yet I don't envisage seeing any changes whatsoever at the coal face.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

The Bill given Royal Assent today is just to enable the TOCs to be taken into public ownership (via the OLR pro tem) as and when the core expiry date is reached. Chiltern and Thamelink will be first up in April and XC last in October 2027. There will be a second Bill to set up GBR, which is when the major reorganisation will occur, with a regional structure being tipped.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

The Bill given Royal Assent today is just to enable the TOCs to be taken into public ownership (via the OLR pro tem) as and when the core expiry date is reached. Chiltern and Thamelink will be first up in April and XC last in October 2027. There will be a second Bill to set up GBR, which is when the major reorganisation will occur, with a regional structure being tipped.

Don't forget WMT/GA which are now past their Core Term

 

[coppercapped]

SNIP

One of the ironies of privatisation - and the creation of 25 TOCs - was that it was intended to depress wages /salaries as it had done in the bus industry. The reverse, of course, happened with competitive bidding between TOCs.

This is not true. The privatisation process on the railways was never intended to depress wages and salaries. The railways were to be supported by government subsidies on seven year contracts so money was not an issue. The bus industry was in a much weaker financial position than the Government appreciated and no additional central government funding was planned so pressures on wages and salaries in that industry were a response to the circumstances.

Some commentators — and after 30 years I no longer have the references as this was all pre-wide scale world wide web — pointed out at the time that having many employers rather than just one would be beneficial to pay levels. The economists' expression for one purchaser is a 'monopsony' which is the mirror image of a 'monopoly', being one supplier. Both are equally pernicious.

 

[CapabilityB]

I think it will take quite a long time to unify the terms on which individual TOCs operate, and there may never be a single "contract".
GBR/DOHL will have to start with the existing TOC/NR contractual basis, and somehow evolve them to a new combined structure.
NR's costs will also have to be factored into the new setup, and that has only recently been fixed by the ORR for CP7 (2024-29).
Contracts will also be necessary for open access, freight and concessions outside GBR (eg Elizabeth Line) and any devolved operations.
So there will need to be a team responsible for all that.
ORR is also the economic regulator and keeper of the level playing field - nothing has been said about where those powers will lie.

If you look at the NR transparent pay scales that are publicly available on their website, I'm not sure how GBR will manage aligning those very generous pay scales with TOC and DfT pay which is much lower.

 

[jackdoyle]

Just been announced that Louise Haigh has resigned as Transport Secretary which may delay things a bit.

Exchange of letters here https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1862379483375796386?t=fAhaClU0k7mWx9W5hpW3Hw&s=19

 

[HerneHill]

Just been announced that Louise Haigh has resigned as Transport Secretary which may delay things a bit.

Exchange of letters here https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1862379483375796386?t=fAhaClU0k7mWx9W5hpW3Hw&s=19

New thread discussing this here -

Another Transport Secretary Hits the Dust

Well Louise Haigh didn’t last long in office. I wonder who will replace her?

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Clarence Yard]

Just been announced that Louise Haigh has resigned as Transport Secretary which may delay things a bit.

Exchange of letters here https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1862379483375796386?t=fAhaClU0k7mWx9W5hpW3Hw&s=19

The Statement to the House on taking back TOCs will already have been written so unless there is a No 10 inspired change of policy (unlikely), it will just be given by the new man/woman in charge.

If it isn’t given on Monday/Tuesday of next week, the widely tipped dates, then it gets more interesting.

 

[superkopite]

New thread discussing this here -

Another Transport Secretary Hits the Dust

Well Louise Haigh didn’t last long in office. I wonder who will replace her?

www.railforums.co.uk

Was the Louise Haigh post deleted?

 

[Goldfish62]

If it isn’t given on Monday/Tuesday of next week, the widely tipped dates, then it gets more interesting.

Any delay to the announcement will inconsequential in the scheme of things. There's not going to be a change of direction. The only way to do that would be to repeal the Act that passed into law two days ago!

 

[JamesT]

Was the Louise Haigh post deleted?

I think it's been folded into the thread https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ng-reported-to-police-by-her-employer.277660/