STAGECOACH has parted company with the boss of its rail division shortly after the company said it would take legal action against the UK Government after being barred from bidding from three major franchises, writes Scott Wright.
Tim Shoveller, who has worked for the transport giant for nearly 12 years, will leave next month to join Network Rail as regional managing director, north west and central. His departure comes a week after Stagecoach revealed it was suing the Department of Transport (Dft) after being disqualified from the bidding process for the East Midlands franchise.
As managing director of Stagecoach’s UK rail division, Mr Shoveller has been responsible for managing the company’s rail contracts and new business opportunities since 2016. He joined from Virgin Trains in 2007.
Stagecoach revealed in April that it had been told by the Dft that its bid to run the East Midlands, West Coast and South Eastern franchises were non-compliant because its proposals did not take on sufficient risk for liabilities on the Railway Pension Scheme. It is preparing to launch a judicial review of the Dft’s decision to rule it out of the East Midlands bid and award it to Abellio, and is considering action against the decisions to rule it out of the West Coast and South Eastern franchises bid processes.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here