This brings us back to the same question though. How have some TOCs managed to have plenty of drivers? Are they more profitable, e.g Greater Anglia? Some of their routes are lightly loaded off peak but perhaps the peaks make up for it.
TOCs are not equal, they all have their own features and this all affects the situation they are in. GA were lucky they could continue training during COVID, most if not all other TOCs did no where near as much training during COVID. Depends on the age profile of staff too, any TOC with a significant amount of older drivers might be in a worse situation if a chunk decided to take early retirement during COVID. There are so many variables, another is things like timetable enhancements, if one was planned pre COVID and then dropped during/after, an operator might have more drivers than they otherwise would have had without the timetable enhancement.
This was already the case last year. The day after the infamous OHL incident near Acton, I bailed off a Paddington train at Reading and travelled to Dorking. The two trains after mine were both cancelled owing to lack of crew.
As we've seen on multiple other TOC's, ending a Franchise doesn't solve its problems overnight.
Going slightly OT, but in franchised days I am aware of several instances of TOCs paying for private medical treatment to get staff back working more quickly. Presume the DfT no longer sanctions such activities?
It doesn't say what the govt will be doing to assist.
Heres the text
Have they reinforced trains that have been removed?
It's TPE all over again.
There's no hint in the letter than the financial constraints on XC have been relaxed at all.
The SoS if she can detach herself from being political ought to realise its a lot easier to finger point at a TOC sitting outside the DfT than one thats under the auspices of OLR. Also i suspect if they saw a longer future as an operator they could be coerced more easily into remedying the issues. OLR is no better at delivery in my view and the halo has definitely fallen off LNER so SoS would be wise to get at least a shadow organisation setup before attempting to "nationalise" anymore operators.
Why should a poorly performing operator be given a carrot? Do your job or don't bother bidding for contracts.
It seems like the franchise will end early if it doesn't improve.
The balance, of course, is that whilst the owners will indeed want to continue to bank their fees for as long as possible, they also aren’t going to spend or invest a penny more than they have to, seeing as they have zero chance of retaining the TOC. So I suppose there may well be a degree of ‘pushing the boundaries’ going on, to see what they can get away with. You have to wonder if XC are increasing their overall profitability by doing what they’re doing. XC of course don’t have the luxury of paring back station staffing to the minimum to save money in their last days, which appears to be a popular tactic elsewhere.
Interesting. So XC, in this instance, have gained nothing at all by holding back on training, and will gain nothing at all by running a reduced timetable? Not even, for example, paying crews overtime to cover shifts, or stocking the catering provisions, access charges, fuel etc - every penny of every cost associated with running a train from A to B, and all TOC crew training activities, are provided by the DfT, and is varied accordingly if a timetable is enhanced or reduced?
More or less as any NRC just sends in the costs incurred each four weekly period and then gets the mgt fee added. At the end of each year if they have outperformed the operational and performance targets they can earn additional income. Not sure what XC terms were (its all redacted in the contract document) but for example First group in a stock exchange announcement over FSWR and FTPE at the time indicated that fee income could be tripled if they beat the highest target scores. So given the operational performance metric includes cancellations it wouldn't have been in their interest to cut back on driver training especially if they had included the cost of that in the annual business plan. Given DfT had strangled them on rolling stock until this year when there was some modest expansion agreed it would appear things were improving but clearly below the surface they weren't. I suspect also the last govt had thrown the towel in dealing with any issues being presented to them thus leaving the problem for the new govt. Ultimately new SoS is hell bent on nationalisation despite the track record of OLR is mixed yet we have good privately run operators like GA so hopefully they will be careful about how fast they absorb the NRC operators.
Yes but the reason the current OLR ToCs aren't anything special is because they are still set up to run independently , with their own resources, staff etc. This is what is ineffective about the current system. Begin to amalgamate TOCs, the resources and staff, and suddenly you have a leaner more efficient railway able to respond better to problems. The current OLR TOCs really are not a good example of what life *should* be like under nationalised GBR.
Absolutely; I certainly hope that as TOCs are taken back in-house we start to see some very substantial rationalisation of backoffice functions etc. Given the reportedly so far very ameniable tone of pay discsussions between the unions and the new government it seems possible that major cost savings are not being sought from frontline staff, so potentially the prize might be seen to be the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff.
Yup both fair points and really make the case for getting the structure and right leadership in place before anymore NRCs are nationalised
I think the XC driver training school at Derby might disagree with you. They are now on cohort No 18 of trainee drivers with courses either consecutive or even overlapping. I am pleased that new-to-grade drivers are in practically every driver depot
