@northem
Chris Jackson
Regional Director
Northern Trains Limited
Floor C, County Hall,
Pitt Street
Preston PR1 8XB
[email protected]
Andrew Gwynne MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 1AA
Our ref: CJ/AG
22 July 2020
Dear Andrew,
Re: Amendments to Manchester Piccadilly-Rose Hill via Hyde services from September 2020
I am writing to inform you of a temporary change we will be making to our service pattern in South East Manchester from September 2020.
Following the first phase of our Key Worker Timetable which launched in late March we have been uplifting services on a periodic basis under the principles of reliability, capacity provision and resilience agreed with our clients. It will not be possible for us to restore service levels to pre COVID levels for some time due to the number of colleagues who are classified as vulnerable; the amount of training still to be completed on both our new trains/Class 769 fleet and the natural attrition of operational staff (with their replacements still to be trained).
Like other train operators, we paused all training where social distancing could not be maintained from the start of the pandemic. This has affected our training pipeline for drivers in particular; and we are currently working with our trade union colleagues at a local and national level to risk assess how we can safely switch this training back on.
Over the coming weeks we will make several changes to the service provision, balanced against our resource availability. From early September until mid-December 2020 the Rose Hill Marple-Manchester Piccadilly via Hyde Central service will temporarily not be operating. Customers who usually use Fairfield station will be advised to use services from nearby stations on the Hadfield/Glossop-Manchester line, public bus services or Manchester Metrolink (Ashton Line).
We are currently working on a customer and accessibility mitigation plan with partners including Transport for Greater Manchester to ensure that our customers receive advance notice of the changes.
Should you have any questions about these changes or want to discuss the rationale for this change in more detail, I would be more than happy to meet.
Yours sincerely
W
Chris Jackson
Regional Director
www.northernrailway.co.uk