Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has written to Transport Secretary Louise Haigh to recommend the cancellation of Avanti West Coast’s contract.
Mr Burnham explained that, following a Rail North Committee meeting with Avanti representatives last week, it became clear that the operator’s performance had not materially improved since March.
In his letter, Mr Burnham wrote:
The Mayor of Greater Manchester acknowledged that “current performance is unacceptable across a number of operators”, but cited “specific issues” with Avanti West Coast.
Data from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), detailing passenger rail performance between January and March 2024, revealed that 44.5% of Avanti West Coast services arrived on time, in comparison to an industry average of 68.3%. Nevertheless, this marked an improvement on the 37.2% recorded in the previous quarter.
Meanwhile the ORR found that Avanti had a cancellation score of 8.5% between January and March, compared to an industry average of 3.3%. 69.1% of the cancellations were found to be attributable to the operator, while 30.9% were attributable to Network Rail.
The Rail North Committee found that the reliability of the West Coast Main Line was of growing concern, concurring with ORR data that failures of Network Rail infrastructure were responsible for close to 63-64% of delays.
Mr Burnham said that the Committee would be happy to work with the Department for Transport to find solutions to improve the performance of the West Coast Main Line.
Avanti was awarded a new long-term contract last September following significant improvements to reliability, punctuality and customer satisfaction, as cancellations were reduced to as little as 1.1% over a 12-month period. It was awarded on the back of two short-term six-month contracts, during which Avanti had to develop a recovery plan to address poor performance on key routes.
Then-Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “Over the past year, short-term contracts were necessary to rebuild the timetable and reduce cancellations.
“Now Avanti are back on track, providing long-term certainty for both the operator and passengers will best ensure that improvements continue.”
The new long-term contract began in October 2023, with a core term of three years and a maximum possible term of nine years. Under the terms of the contract, after three years the Transport Secretary can terminate it at any time with three months’ notice. It is still over two years until this clause is effective.
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