BBC
Clare Harland says her experience on Northern was 'absolutely rubbish'
Northern Rail has pledged to improve its performance as customers criticize its “rubbish” service.
The railway company, nationalized in 2020, canceled more than 1,000 trains in the last half year.
A senior executive said the company was “sorry” for its recent performance, which was “not good enough”.
Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said an improvement plan proposed by the company would “reduce cancellations and improve reliability for passengers”.
Northern Rail has been trying to remedy its poor service for several years.
It runs services across the north of England and the Midlands, including to stations in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham.
Passenger Clare Harland said her experience at Northern was “absolutely rubbish”.
Trains are “either hit or canceled,” she said.
“You try to leave (work) early, to get one early, or you wait until you get one after about six-thirty, which obviously you don't want to do,” she said .
Another passenger said Northern was “absolutely evil.”
“I take this train every day,” he said. “Either it doesn’t arrive on time or it doesn’t arrive completely,” he said. “We have some old, dirty rolling stock. It's a sham, it really is.”
Passenger Lisa Greenhalgh said she arrived at the station 20 minutes early, and then waited an hour and 40 minutes for a train “repeatedly in the freezing cold, and you didn't get a news, so you don't know. what happens, and by then it's too late to drive to Manchester, so you end up spending two hours out of the house and getting nowhere. »
Some companies also complain about services from the North.
Norman Wallis says Northern is 'killing' his business
Norman Wallis, owner of Southport Pleasureland, said: “We are a tourist destination and basically Northern is killing us. »
“Not just our business, but also the hotels, the retailers, the restaurants. Everything in the city is destroyed, because we don't have the lifeblood, which is the people – they don't have an easy way to 'getting into the Southport area,' he said.
“It’s extremely difficult, and on Sunday there’s no service, so we can’t get staff in, we can’t get people in.”
The company was placed under government control in 2020, but ongoing problems within the network have persisted.
In July, Northern Rail received a 'default notice' from the Department for Transport for canceling too many trains, forcing it to work on a plan to resolve the problem.
The company said one of its main problems was the availability of train staff, highlighting high levels of sickness, and also the fact that Sundays run outside of contracted working hours.
Between October 13 and November 9 this year, less than half of its services ran on time.
Matt Rice, Northern's chief operating officer, said the company was “sorry for our recent performance, accepts it was not good enough and understands the impact this was having on our customers”.
He added that Northern Rail was “working hard to resolve train staff availability issues so we can improve reliability for our customers”, including agreeing a new working arrangement on rest days for train drivers.
He also offered drivers a new deal to work on Sundays, he said, adding that the RMT union leadership will review the offer before putting it to a vote by members.
“We recognize that there is still much work to be done to address performance issues and we are now focused on implementing our improvement plan,” Rice said.
In its latest improvement plan, Northern said that by 2027 it wanted 90% of its trains to be on time, with just 2% cancellations.
It said it would improve its service by introducing working arrangements on Sundays and rest days and putting in place a “disease action plan”.
Northern said she is still facing issues caused by a 2018 schedule change that persists with scheduling and “challenges faced by her colleagues.”
It wants to make its timetables less complex and also ensure that its “aging” train fleet undergoes targeted maintenance.
Andy Burnham said Northern was 'actively working against' Manchester's economic growth
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said there was “chaos all day long” at Manchester's stations.
“We are in the busiest time of year in Manchester. We say we want growth, but we have a rail service that is actively trying to stop us getting that growth and attracting people towards the city,” he said.
“This needs to be fixed now,” Burnham added.
Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh said the North had been “disappointed for too long by poor rail services (and) unacceptable levels of cancellations and delays”, and that these were “holding back its economy and his ambition.
She said the company's improvement plan would “generate higher revenues for the taxpayer and boost the region's economy as a whole.”
Haigh added that the government was “modernizing working practices”.
The RMT union will vote with members on which drivers will volunteer to work on Sundays and use a passenger assistance app to help customers.
The company will earn more from its extra revenue than it will spend on additional staff under the deal, the government said.
