TransPennine Express is losing its contract due to poor service

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By Derbel Jordan and Katie Austin, BBC News May 11, 2023 at 07:28 GMT

Updated 26 minutes ago

Image source, Transpennine Express

TransPennine Express will be nationalized after customer complaints about poor service and train cancellations.

The government will now operate the service covering Manchester and Liverpool in the north of England and rolling out to Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland.

Passengers will not see any change in the service but the overall aim is to improve its performance.

About one in six TransPennine services were canceled in March, the highest rate in the UK.

The Department of Transportation said the TransPennine contract will not be renewed on May 28.

It will now be managed by an ‘operator of last resort’, which means the company will step in on behalf of the government to take over the management of the service.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said passengers and businesses no longer had to bear the “brunt of constant cancellations”.

TransPennine, which is operated by FirstGroup, has been notable for the number of trains it canceled the night before it was due to depart, due to a staff shortage.

There has been an ongoing outage since early 2022, and in January and February of this year, the company canceled a third of its services.

The company said the recovery plan is lowering the numbers.

It has previously blamed high employee sickness rates, driver training backlogs and a lack of an overtime agreement with drivers’ union Aslef.

Putting TransPennine under state control “was not a silver bullet and will not immediately address a number of the challenges we face,” Harper said.

He blamed Aslef’s strikes for impeding full service delivery on TransPennine routes.

FirstGroup said it was “disappointed” with the government’s decision not to renew the contract it has operated in various forms since 2004.

“Our team has worked hard to improve services, including by hiring and training more drivers than ever before,” said FirstGroup CEO Graham Sutherland.

“Today’s decision does not change our belief in the important role of private rail operators in delivering vital and environmentally friendly transport to customers and communities across the UK.”

Recent data showed that the cancellation rate on TransPennine trains was 17% in March, including trains that were stopped the night before due to staff shortages.

West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin said: “It is absolutely correct that this is the end of the line for the failure of TransPennine Express.

“We hope this provides an opportunity to re-establish relationships with employees who have borne the brunt of the operator’s failures and look forward to hearing how the new operator intends to improve services.”

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