GTR Chief Executive Charles Horton is resigning

[AlterEgo]

Reported on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/bbctomedwards/status/1007580924865892352?s=21

BBC’s Tom Edwards:

BREAKING: Govia Thameslink Chief Exec Charles Horton has resigned

 

[alastair]

In a bit more detail:

http://www.cityam.com/287637/govia-thameslink-railway-chief-executive-charles-horton

Horton's resignation comes days before he is due to go before the Transport Select Committee for a grilling by MPs over the rail timetable changes

Go-Ahead said Horton will remain in his post for a short period to oversee the development of a temporary timetable to tackle the recent disruption to services, with a successor announced in due course

David Brown, group chief executive of Go-Ahead, said: “I would like to thank Charles for his hard work with Govia for the past 15 years. Under often challenging conditions, he has built a team to deliver ...

 

[XCTurbostar]

In other words, hes bolted before the investigation into the timetabling issues has been completed..

 

[Table 52]

This resignation probably should have happened several weeks ago, but presumably was delayed due to "something Network Rail did"

 

[Monty]

Talk about a poison chalice, don't envy the person who replaces him one bit. It's probably time that the DfT show some balls and put GTR out of its misery.

 

[Merseysider]

This resignation probably should have happened several weeks ago, but presumably was delayed due to "something Network Rail did"

Or an extra paycheck

 

[swt_passenger]

Look on the bright side though, people have been calling for heads to roll at the top of various TOCs or NR for years, in the hope that all the problems will go away as soon as the chap has gone.

So I look forward to the full Thameslink timetable starting soon after his replacement arrives at his desk...

 

[Table 52]

Or an extra paycheck

A possible third option - he only realised yesterday that the World Cup was starting and thought it'd be a nice opportunity to get some time off and watch the footie.

 

[A0wen]

It's all rather tedious - I can recall the routine demanding of the head of whoever was the chairman of BR at various times back in the 80s and 90s every time something went wrong.

It never made any practical difference. Nor will 'killing' GTR for that matter, because the same basic problem will still exist whoever is the franchise holder, specifically:

- It's a complicated timetable with many conflicts and dependencies.
- The RMT & ASLEF are determined it should fail, because they're too busy playing their political games of trying to get a nationalised network so they can hold the rail network to ransom again, rather than trying to help make it work.
- Network Rail, ironically the bit under "government control" is still the weakest link in many respects.

 

[OxtedSignaller]

Knowing GTR/GoAhead if will only be the same people taking over. My early bet is that David Statham could potentially take over. The Southeastern contract is up for grabs from next year anyway and he has experience of running Thameslink when they were FCC.

 

[Chrisgr31]

Seems likely that Charles Horton will be blamed for misleading Grayling about the timetable preparations, whether he did or not!

 

[nat67]

Yes what a W word. But it could still take ages to sort this all out. Charles Horton has an Estate agent name.

 

[zoneking]

Good riddance, but I very much doubt it will change things.

 

[bramling]

Look on the bright side though, people have been calling for heads to roll at the top of various TOCs or NR for years, in the hope that all the problems will go away as soon as the chap has gone.

So I look forward to the full Thameslink timetable starting soon after his replacement arrives at his desk...

It won’t, but as with anything which isn’t doing what it should, there comes a time when you have to cut your losses and make changes. It’s not just that this shambles has happened (that’s bad enough, and probably to a greater or lesser extent not all down to GTR), but the handling of it has been shambolic - and that is down to GTR.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that quite a lot of people associated with this simply don’t know what they’re doing, hence trying to bring in a timetable overnight without drivers having the correct knowledge.

First thing with any new project, even just a rolling stock replacement, is to plan and pay for extra resources, mainly drivers and instructors, so that you can implement your project whilst at the same time maintaining your “business as usual”. It’s simply astounding this didn’t happen, especially a project so many many years in the planning.

It really feels like a load of inexperienced / incompetent people have simply tried to join some dots on a map with no understanding at all of what might be necessary to achieve that, at all let alone reliably. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise - the whole project has reeked of this almost from its inception.

 

[Journeyman]

- The RMT & ASLEF are determined it should fail, because they're too busy playing their political games of trying to get a nationalised network so they can hold the rail network to ransom again, rather than trying to help make it work.

This, 1000%.

I'm absolutely convinced that the RMT's agenda was to drive a franchise to failure, and they chose Southern as their battleground.

 

[bramling]

This, 1000%.

I'm absolutely convinced that the RMT's agenda was to drive a franchise to failure, and they chose Southern as their battleground.

I don’t see the union connection. Is there any evidence at all that union agreements or actions have had any bearing on this? The GN side hardly has a reputation for militancy.

 

[BRblue]

I don’t see the union connection. Is there any evidence at all that union agreements or actions have had any bearing on this? The GN side hardly has a reputation for militancy.

No there's not... but that doesn't satisfy some peoples anti union agenda.

 

[Journeyman]

No there's not... but that doesn't satisfy some peoples anti union agenda.

I'm not anti-union - I've benefitted enormously from union membership, although I've never been in the RMT.

However, I'm very much opposed to their politically-motivated action against DOO, which has achieved absolutely nothing. It's damaged the industry, lost custom, lost their members a fortune, and has absolutely poisoned industrial relations - it'll take years to recover. I'm convinced it was all done in an attempt to make the TSGN franchise unviable and force renationalisation.

 

[bramling]

I'm not anti-union - I've benefitted enormously from union membership, although I've never been in the RMT.

However, I'm very much opposed to their politically-motivated action against DOO, which has achieved absolutely nothing. It's damaged the industry, lost custom, lost their members a fortune, and has absolutely poisoned industrial relations - it'll take years to recover. I'm convinced it was all done in an attempt to make the TSGN franchise unviable and force renationalisation.

That may or may not be so with the Southern DOO dispute (although it wasn’t the unions who started it - in fact it wasn’t really GTR either, more the DFT), however it really doesn’t seem to be the case that union actions or agreements have had anything to do with the FailedPlan2020 fiasco. In fact union involvement might have been beneficial in highlighting what others evidently couldn’t see- that the plan simply wasn’t viable.

In any event, with the DOO issue being largely driven by DFT (hmm, funny how their name seems to keep cropping up with various fiascos), renationalisation wouldn’t solve anything at all. The TOCs don’t really seem to regard DOO as worth the hassle since hardly any have bothered to try and introduce or extend it pretty much since privatisation.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Charles Horton (with GTR COO Nick Brown) are up before the Transport Select Committee on Monday (1645) on the Rail Timetable Changes.
Arriva Rail North people will be there too (David Brown MD and Rob Warnes, Performance & Planning).
In a separate session later, it's Network Rail's turn to be grilled by the TSC (Jo Kaye, System Operator and SE and LNW Route MDs).
https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/
Should be an interesting session.

Charles Horton has a lot to answer for, but so have many others, including the DfT.
He was certainly not the architect of the timetable that collapsed.

 

[driver_m]

Eyes down for another session of railforums union bingo!

We've got the 'holding people to ransom' ball already

''politically motivated'

We'll have a line soon!!

Incidentally, on the actual subject of Horton going........ GOOD.

 

[MrCub]

I'm unsure how the RMT could have any impact on Thameslink, a service which is already fully DOO. Revenue protection, dateline, and booking office staff might be RMT. Drivers are ASLEF, aren't they? Not sure how any of these people could have burgered up the timetable.

Horton - bye then;

 

[A0wen]

That may or may not be so with the Southern DOO dispute (although it wasn’t the unions who started it - in fact it wasn’t really GTR either, more the DFT),

The problem with your approach is the unions *never* want change which might either make the railway less costly to run or reduce the number of their members employed in it. Which basically means they try to stand in the way of any staffing or technology led changes which might result in this. So by definition it will always be "the management" who instigated it, because they are trying to move things forward.

In the specific case of DOO, BR had exactly the same when it sought to introduce it to the Bedpan line as was back in 1981 - which led to the brand new 317s sitting in sidings for weeks if not months whilst commuters continued to be subjected to the clapped out and unreliable class 127 DMUs.

There are, no doubt, some lines where DOO isn't practical - basically most of the rural ones where there are huge numbers of unstaffed stations and halts which mean somebody has to sell a ticket. But that isn't the commuter lines into London and there's little practical argument as to why all of the 'commuter' services into and out of London couldn't be run as DOO in the way they have been on most of the MML and GN services since the mid 1980s.

 

[HLE]

Eyes down for another session of railforums union bingo!

We've got the 'holding people to ransom' ball already

''politically motivated'

We'll have a line soon!!

Incidentally, on the actual subject of Horton going........ GOOD.

I suspect there’ll be many a railwayman/women feeling the same. Good riddance

 

[driver_m]

The problem with your approach is the unions *never* want change which might either make the railway less costly to run or reduce the number of their members employed in it. Which basically means they try to stand in the way of any staffing or technology led changes which might result in this. So by definition it will always be "the management" who instigated it, because they are trying to move things forward.

In the specific case of DOO, BR had exactly the same when it sought to introduce it to the Bedpan line as was back in 1981 - which led to the brand new 317s sitting in sidings for weeks if not months whilst commuters continued to be subjected to the clapped out and unreliable class 127 DMUs.

There are, no doubt, some lines where DOO isn't practical - basically most of the rural ones where there are huge numbers of unstaffed stations and halts which mean somebody has to sell a ticket. But that isn't the commuter lines into London and there's little practical argument as to why all of the 'commuter' services into and out of London couldn't be run as DOO in the way they have been on most of the MML and GN services since the mid 1980s.

I take you have full knowledge of how my union goes about its business then. You seem to be adamant that they don't want change.. I'll give you a very good starter with the WCML. How do you propose bringing it into a company that runs said rural routes and places where it would cost a fortune to implement (LNWR/WMT) I look forward to this......

 

[47421]

Clearly he and GTR are far from the only culprits in this mess, but his departure was inevitable weeks ago when the scale of the shortage of route and traction trained drivers became clear. It was well known that GTR had driver shortage from day one of the franchise in 2015. Yes 700s were a bit late, yes they had limited access to Canal tunnels, yes timetable finalised late and diagrams couldn't be finalised until TT finalised, but even so it is clear GTR got their driver resourcing very wrong.

https://t.co/VIlkVoJSj1

 

[Darandio]

And the RMT followed with their usual childish response....

"This whole basket-case operation is a failure on every level."

A failure it may be, but the constant use of such language makes the RMT look very silly indeed.

 

[Robertj21a]

Funny how everybody is now saying that it wasn't only Horton, it was X, Y and Z. Earlier postings suggested that Horton was the cause of just about everything that was wrong and his mere departure was all that was needed to sort everything out !

 

[bramling]

Funny how everybody is now saying that it wasn't only Horton, it was X, Y and Z. Earlier postings suggested that Horton was the cause of just about everything that was wrong and his mere departure was all that was needed to sort everything out !

Horton is one piece of dirt in a very large mess. GTR has been a disaster from the word go - and even if we accept that issues were inherited from First (although they seemed to run the GN, at least, pretty well) and issues have been created by the DFT (Thameslink Programme and the Southern DOO dispute), there’s little sign that GTR has handled these challenges well. In this last month the level of detachment from reality exhibited by Horton in particular has been quite alarming.

There comes a point where a decision has to be made to abandon ship a sinking ship, and with the mess that the TSGN franchise is now in I think it’s fair to say that point has come. It’s worth remembering that this mess is entirely an own-goal for the industry - a few years ago we had two (not including Gatwick Express) relatively stable and satisfactorily performing franchises.

I’d like to see some accountability from the DFT, however it’s very hard to pin down responsibility there because of 1) the long timescales involved in this project, and 2) the general lack of accountability and transparency inherent in the DFT. Again whilst Grayling has not showered himself with credit, this project goes back well before his tenure.

Where do we go from here? Not an easy question as the whole franchise is a monumental mess, and because of ThamesLink/ there is now linkage between the southern and TL/GN sides. I think I’d be looking to completely go back to the December 2017 timetable, stabilise the whole thing by splitting the Southern and TL/GN franchises, and then completely re-plan the whole Thameslink programme, with a smaller selection of routes and a bit less through running. I’d then recruit a dedicated pool of drivers for the new Thameslink services and ensure they’re fully competent before trying to implement a timetable. Unfortunately someone would then be left accounting for a massive waste of public money.

 

[Robertj21a]

Horton is one piece of dirt in a very large mess. GTR has been a disaster from the word go - and even if we accept that issues were inherited from First (although they seemed to run the GN, at least, pretty well) and issues have been created by the DFT (Thameslink Programme and the Southern DOO dispute), there’s little sign that GTR has handled these challenges well. In this last month the level of detachment from reality exhibited by Horton in particular has been quite alarming.

There comes a point where a decision has to be made to abandon ship a sinking ship, and with the mess that the TSGN franchise is now in I think it’s fair to say that point has come. It’s worth remembering that this mess is entirely an own-goal for the industry - a few years ago we had two (not including Gatwick Express) relatively stable and satisfactorily performing franchises.

I’d like to see some accountability from the DFT, however it’s very hard to pin down responsibility there because of 1) the long timescales involved in this project, and 2) the general lack of accountability and transparency inherent in the DFT. Again whilst Grayling has not showered himself with credit, this project goes back well before his tenure.

Where do we go from here? Not an easy question as the whole franchise is a monumental mess, and because of ThamesLink/ there is now linkage between the southern and TL/GN sides. I think I’d be looking to completely go back to the December 2017 timetable, stabilise the whole thing by splitting the Southern and TL/GN franchises, and then completely re-plan the whole Thameslink programme, with a smaller selection of routes and a bit less through running. I’d then recruit a dedicated pool of drivers for the new Thameslink services and ensure they’re fully competent before trying to implement a timetable. Unfortunately someone would then be left accounting for a massive waste of public money.

I would guess that, in practice, it will be business as usual, just under a new head. Not sure there's any need to go back and change everything, just some fine tuning under a careful pair of eyes/hands.