03.10.12
West Coast handover scrapped after catastrophic DfT mistakes
The Department for Transport has been forced to abandon the West Coast franchising process after uncovering serious errors in its officials’ calculations, meaning FirstGroup will not now take over the running of the line from Virgin on December 9.
All other re-franchising processes have also been put on hold pending two major reviews into the fiasco, ordered by new transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin. The errors were only discovered as the DfT prepared its paperwork for Virgin's court case. Several officials have been suspended.
All four bidders will be compensated for the money they spent on the flawed process – a predicted £40m.
McLoughlin has already apologised to Sir Richard Branson and there is now a possibility that Virgin could be asked to keep running the service until a new franchising process has been completed. Otherwise, state-owned Directly Operated Railways will step in. Either way, McLoughlin has insisted that the trains will still run, manned by the same staff, after December 9.
More soon…