Dear Mr Collins,
Thank you for your email of 17 July to the Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP,
Secretary of State for Transport, regarding the Abellio Greater Anglia
franchise; I have been asked to respond.
The Abellio Greater Anglia
franchise commenced in February 2012, with an expiry date in July 2014. This short franchise length was to allow the
Secretary of State to consider the outcome of the consultation on franchising
policy together with the recommendations of the McNulty review of 2011. It was envisaged at the time that bidders for
the longer franchise to be let in 2014 would propose improvements to the
franchise. As such it would have been unrealistic to expect the incoming
franchisee to deliver largescale improvements in performance when utilising the
same trains and infrastructure as the previous operator, or provide new rolling
stock in such a short time-period.
As I said, Abellio started
running Greater Anglia services in 2012, when they stepped in to replace
National Express as franchise holders. Since then, as with all rail regions,
Network Rail (who own and maintain the UK rail structure) have been investing
money in both maintaining and improving in the Anglia region; with the
Crossrail project improving services from Shenfield, and the recently announced
‘Norwich in Ninety’ looking into ways to speed up rail services to the East of
England by as much as 25% being two obvious examples of such work. Network Rail
has also started to invest almost £1 billion in 800 miles of track and station
improvements in the Anglia region. For more detail please see http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/7063.aspx
Network Rail has invested, and will continue to
invest, billions of pounds in maintaining and improving the rail network. In
the next 5 years, over £38 billion will be invested by Network Rail across the
UK rail network. This programme takes forward the plan set out by the
Government in its rail investment strategy (RIS/HLOS) published in 2012.
In
2002 when Network Rail took control of Britain's Rail infrastructure, train
performance was languishing at record low levels (78.6% of trains arriving on
time nationally). Since then, it has risen to averaging around 90%. Network
Rail has been tasked with ensuring that 92.5% of trains arrive on time
nationally by 2019.
As you may be aware, the new
franchising programme announced by the Secretary of State in March 2013
required a further short term contract to be entered into with Abellio, to run
until October 2016. The new Franchise Agreement includes refurbishment works to
be carried out on some of the rolling stock. There are two committed
obligations in the Franchise Agreement. The first; the refreshment of the
Mark III rolling stock is for the franchisee to procure, undertake and complete
during the franchise period, and the Franchisee has already begun the tendering
process for the work to be carried out for this refreshment. The second is for
the Franchisee, during the Franchise Period to use best endeavours to procure
the carrying out of refurbishment works to 12-4 car Class 321 units which
is a project being led by the Rolling Stock Owning Company that lease the stock
to Abellio Greater Anglia.
The Department is aware of
stakeholder aspirations for improvements to the rolling stock for Greater
Anglia services and will be considering whether improvements can be made ahead
of the long term franchise which will commence in October 2016. A consultation
process will commence during 2015 to inform the specification for the long term
franchise.
When launching the new franchising
programme in March last year, the Secretary of State made it clear that the new
programme would give fair weight to
passenger satisfaction, which has not always been respected as it should have
been;
[the] future
competitions will also place passengers in the driving seat by ensuring that
their views and satisfaction levels are taken into account when deciding which
companies run our railway services.
I hope that this provides some insight on the
Government’s approach to the matters you raise.
Kind regards
Alistair Hobbs
Rail Commercial
Correspondence Manager | Rail Executive
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