‘Northern must agree and adhere to an action plan or face removal’, say Manchester and Liverpool Mayors

Northern rail service must agree and adhere to an action plan, or face removal of the franchise and be prevented from operating, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, announced on Thursday (24 May).

Following a phone call with the Transport Secretary, Andy and Steve said: “This was welcome but took too long in coming. Northern passengers have endured months of misery and it should not have taken this long to secure a response from the Government.

“What today’s discussion revealed is that there is still considerable distance between the Government’s view of this situation and ours.”

Mayor Burnham said: “Although there remains significant disagreement between us and the Secretary of State on the cause of these problems and on where responsibility lies, all parties agreed that the priority is getting services back on track in the short-term.

“Chaos on the North’s rail network has been so extreme and so prolonged that as a company Northern have lost the benefit of the doubt. They simply cannot be permitted to keep inflicting a miserable sub-standard service on the hundreds of thousands of passengers across our region who have had to endure dire train travel for far too long.”

During the conversation, the Mayors made four clear calls for immediate action, including a shared and agreed analysis of the causes of the problem developed quickly between Northern, Transport for the North (TfN) partners and the Department for Transport (DfT).

Transport for the North and the Department for Transport, acting through The Rail North Partnership, agreed a plan with Northern in response to the current performance issues on 24 May.

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/119097/plan-to-improve-rail-services

Talk by government ministers of “teething problems” suggests that these are only recent problems linked to the new timetable, when in fact Northern passengers have faced disruption over a much longer period of time. Any solution needs to address the endemic staffing shortage in order to avoid any repeat.

Northern’s Action Plan must be published and must include clear dates and milestones for when passengers can expect to see an improvement so Northern can properly be held to account. The travelling public need to be given certainty about what services will be running and when.

An agreed and urgent deadline for when the significant backlog of outstanding Delay Repay claims will be dealt with, along with the introduction of a broader compensation offer for regular users given the scale of the disruption, paid for by fines levied at Arriva Rail North.

Finally, if Northern fails to adhere to the agreed Action Plan, a process be initiated to remove Arriva Rail North’s franchise from operating.

Recently Andy Burnham called for an investigation into the rail provider’s poor performance.

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/news-archives?type=News&searchtype=Phrase&Criteria=northern