The transport secretary has expressed “serious concern” about railway operator CrossCountry, warning she may take further action amid its ongoing reduction in services.
Louise Haigh said she had little choice but to approve the three-month reduced timetable proposed by the train operator, despite describing it as a “dire service”.
CrossCountry operates train services across Great Britain, and announced at the end of July it would temporarily suspend services on several major routes between 10 August and 9 November.
Affected journeys include those between Scotland and south-west England via Birmingham, Newcastle and Reading, Manchester and Bristol, and Cardiff and Nottingham.
In a letter to the company’s interim managing directors, Julian Edwards and Scott Maynard, sent on Friday, Haigh acknowledged they had written to her about the reduced services.
She said: “In response, I want to put on record my serious concern about the performance of CrossCountry services. Your passengers have been suffering from a substandard service for too long and I am determined to address this.”
She added: “Given your inability to run a full timetable, and the need to provide clear information for passengers I had little choice but to approve this request.
“Put simply, the only reason I accepted your proposal was to give passengers more certainty on which services will run.”
Haigh said she had required the company to agree a remedial plan, which formally contractualises its proposals to improve services.
CrossCountry has set out plans to reduce the backlog of driver training among steps to boost reliability for passengers, according to the transport secretary.
“If you fail to deliver the remedial plan, I will not hesitate to take further action under the contract,” she warned.
In a statement, Haigh said: “There can be no excuse for this sort of dire service, and it will not be tolerated under this government.
“I’ve written to CrossCountry to make clear that while I required them to deliver more services than their original plan, the reduced timetable is certainly not satisfactory, and it will undoubtedly affect passengers.
“CrossCountry is persistently one of the worst performing operators, I had little choice in approving this request. If they fail to deliver their plan to improve, I won’t hesitate to take further action.”
CrossCountry’s contract was agreed by the previous Conservative government and commenced in October last year.
It is due to expire on 12 October 2031.
Labour has promised to bring all passenger railway services back into public ownership when existing private contracts come to an end.
The government introduced the passenger railway services (public ownership) bill to achieve this aim before MPs left parliament for the summer recess.
A CrossCountry spokesperson acknowledged its service had “fallen below the standards our passengers should expect from us”.
“All too frequently, our passengers have been inconvenienced by on-the-day cancellations, which results in poor quality and reliability of service,” the spokesperson added.
“This is why we have taken proactive action to deliver the change needed to provide a better service for our customers.
“We believe that our robust plan is the quickest way to improve our performance and provide a more resilient service.
“By the end of the temporary timetable, we will have more fully trained drivers who can work across the network.
“We will also have reduced our training backlog, providing a more reliable service for customers with fewer cancellations.
“We apologise for the inconvenience our temporary timetable causes our customers.
“We have kept changes to a minimum, and where possible we have redeployed trains to provide more seats and other services to deliver at the highest capacity possible.
“As a result, 97% of our normal daily number of seats will still operate while the temporary timetable is in operation.”