News Release

21st April 2009

MINISTER SAYS TRAIN RELIABILITY A CONCERN

Following his complaints about the reliability of the London Midland train service from Lichfield to London, Michael Fabricant has now received a formal written Parliamentary reply from the Minister of Transport, Paul Clark. Mr Clark says: "Reliability of the London Midland train service on the West Coast Main Line route from Crewe to Euston has been a particular concern recently. Both Network Rail and the train operators on the route are being urged to seek improvements in punctuality and reliability.

"In the year to 28 February 2009 London Midland achieved an average punctuality of 86.5 per cent. across the franchise as a whole and 81.6 per cent. during the four weeks ending on that date. Performance on the Crewe to Euston route has been below this level. Improving rail performance is a key objective for the Department for Transport. Joint action plans are in place between Network Rail and London Midland to address performance issues. London Midland has also developed an Improvement Plan, progress against which is monitored regularly. The Minster of State, Lord Adonis, meets senior representatives of the Rail Industry every four weeks to discuss performance. The Secretary of State met recently with the Chairman of the Office of Rail Regulation, when the reliability of services on the West Coast Main Line was raised. The Office of Rail Regulation is giving particular attention to monitoring Network Rail's performance on the route."

Michael Fabricant now comments: "Many of my constituents - particularly in Armitage, Handsacre, and Fisherwick - experienced over two years of upheaval while two extra rail lines were added to the West Coast Main Line. It was then hoped that the much promoted London Midland Service would provide an efficient, cheap, and regular service to London and back on the Crewe-Euston route. This has not been the case. The service has been unreliable - particularly on Sundays. When I met the London-Midland's managing director, Stephen Banaghan, he sought to reassure me that we would see huge improvements by the time the new May timetable comes into operation. I hope he is correct. Meanwhile, I will keep up the pressure."

And now Stephen Banaghan has now written Michael Fabricant - and others - in which he admits "I appreciate that the poor performance of London Midland services earlier this year has had a huge impact on the confidence our passengers, partners and stakeholders have in our company. We are working hard to restore that confidence by providing a reliable, punctual and high performing rail service right across our network."

The letter from Stephen Banaghan reads:-

Over the last few months London Midland Express services to and from London have not performed as punctually or reliably as they should.

There are a number of reasons for this poor performance, some of them external to London Midland - winter weather, infrastructure failings on the West Coast, incidents which affected the overhead wires and engineering works. But there were also a number of factors under our own control and as a result we have looked in detail at the things that we at London Midland could have done better.

Since the beginning of the year, I, together with my senior team at London Midland, have carried out a thorough review of every aspect of our operations and organisation. As a result of this we are making a number of internal changes to the way we work and the way we are structured, all designed to direct more resources to supporting the front-line delivery of our services. A major part of this has been the strengthening of the management team based locally along the West Coast route, as well as upgrading the systems and processes we now use to support the day to day delivery of our services into London. We are completing consultation on some of the further changes and I expect all of the changes to be in place by the summer.

The introduction of the new timetable for the West Coast last December presented a number of difficulties and challenges, some of which only became apparent once the full timetable began to operate from mid February. We have looked at the timetable in some depth now, and from next month we will be starting to make some of the changes that passengers and stakeholders have requested.

This week, we will be starting a wider dialogue with stakeholders and passengers to improve London Midland services, starting with holding our hands up publicly to the things that went wrong and focussing on eight areas where we are making specific changes which will put those things right. These are:

• New trains

• More seats

• More trains

• More punctual services

• Better information

• Shorter queues

• Better stations

• Listening to passengers

These eight areas for change are designed to see London Midland return to the levels of performance and customer service that we have always been committed to delivering. I am confident that the changes we are making will achieve the improvements our partners and our passengers are looking for and will put us in the best possible position to continue to develop as a strong and dynamic business.