Yahoo News Northern boss' apology to seaside town with 'worst performing trains in the country'
One of Northern's senior leaders has apologised after admitting that trains in a seaside town are among the worst performing in the country.
Matt Rice, the train operator's chief operating officer, acknowledged that the company had "under-delivered" for passengers in the region and continues to face ongoing issues. He highlighted that their services running from Southport were "some of the worst performing rolling stock in the country."
Mr Rice also pointed out that the continued use of "antiquated technology" was "symbolic of a railway service that needs to change." During a rigorous questioning session before the city region's transport committee, Mr Rice updated members on performance and described the number of trains cancelled over the past 12 months as "really chronic."
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According to Northern's figures, in the Liverpool City Region, 74% of trains arrive within three minutes of their scheduled time with up to 20 services cancelled per day. This was "a long way away" from Merseyrail, Mr Rice said, which he cited as an exemplar operator for Northern to strive towards.
The chief operating officer said how he felt Northern had not been funded in such a way to get towards 90% performance for a long time, the ECHO reports.
Despite this, he said there was a determination from staff to improve. He said: "The variety of trains we run, the places we service, the way we crew them, means the complexity of how Northern has grown over the last two decades makes running a reliable railway from point to point more difficult than it should be.
"There is no shortage of people in Northern working really hard, there's 7,000 colleagues and pretty much everyone I've met is committed to trying to do things better." The officer told the committee how negotiations with union officials was a hot button issue for passengers in the city region.
He said: "A very live and the most acute issue as I see it in the Liverpool City Region is the knock on effect to customers in what's happening with our relationship with our colleagues in the trade unions. We do not have the right terms and conditions that guarantee train crew will turn up, particularly on a Sunday, and that means currently and certainly for the last four or five months we cancel far too many trains, in advance of Sunday and then on the day people aren't turning up for various reasons of sickness and absence and we're cancelling again.
"There is a light at the end of that very painful tunnel, our colleagues in the RMT have put out to a vote the amount of money conductors are paid to work on a Sunday significantly increase, which we think is good for them and the communities they live in. In return they have to commit to working their one in three turn they're booked in to do."
Mr Rice said how this could reduce cancellations from between 20 to 30% to around 5% but felt progress had been made, particularly under the government's ownership of Northern since 2021. He added: "We will put more senior leadership and capability around local management and local areas like Liverpool so that the crew here are better supported, better looked after and the delivery will flow.
"It's absolutely vital if we're going to get a better performing railway."
Mr Rice said another issue that impacted the city region was high levels of sickness, with some employment hubs recording double digit percentages for absence. It was beside the seaside however, that Mr Rice said the main issues were.
He said: "Our (class) 769s that come out of Southport are some of the worst performing rolling stock in the country, I'm really sorry for that. It's a classic case of everything that can be good about the railway then everything that doesn't work.
"By trying to be innovative and putting together a multi-modal unit, we've got to a position where they just don't work well enough. The companies that we work with to provide that rolling stock are absolutely committed to the point where as a private sector operator they are putting their hands in their pocket and trying to help us do better with that rolling stock.
"If it doesn't improve, we will have to do something about it. We cannot continue to promise to do something that fails too often."
"That uncertainty in life is awful, on a railway it is chronic and we've got to do something about that." Mr Rice was also pressed on delays to accessibility improvements at Broadgreen station which had ground to a halt.
He said: "We were let down by the construction company that we used to do Broadgreen and we have been in difficult talks with them commercially that has meant they are no longer on site. We weren't able to get the work we thought we'd bought."
Cllr Simon Mountney likened Northern to a "basket case" adding: "I find it a little frustrating that you can't show us improvement until 2027, 2028 and that's a long time for people to wait, they're fed up." Mr Rice responded: "You can't wait to get better and we let people down too often."
