Aberdeen-based FirstGroup has been given a six-month extension to continue running the Avanti West Coast franchise and deliver an "urgent increase" in service levels.
Under the short-term contract granted by the Department for Transport (DfT), the rail company will continue running services between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow until next April. The current contract had been due to expire on October 16.
Avanti has come under fire after slashing its timetables in August, with trains between London and Manchester cut to one per hour. Avanti has blamed the reduced timetable on a shortage of workers after train driver stopped volunteering for overtime in early August.
The DfT noted that Avanti will have trained up an additional 100 drivers by the end of this year, and challenged the company to deliver "the urgent increase in services required".
"We need train services which are reliable and resilient to modern day life," Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said.
READ MORE: Row over unofficial strike action 'lie' as cross-border train services are slashed
"Services on Avanti have been unacceptable and while the company has taken positive steps to get more trains moving, it must do more to deliver certainty of service to its passengers."
Avanti West Coast is currently operating under an Emergency Recovery Measures Agreement (ERMA) which was put in place by the DfT in September 2020 to provide continuity during the recovery from the Covid pandemic. ERMA arrangements were due to expire this month, but will now continue to the end of the contract extension.
"We are committed to working closely with government and our partners across the industry to deliver a successful railway that serves the needs of our customers and communities," FirstGroup chief executive Graham Sutherland said.
"Today’s agreement allows our team at Avanti West Coast to sustain their focus on delivering their robust plan to restore services to the levels that passengers rightly expect."
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