Avanti West Coast
Stockport and the North West region continues to face the consequences of a poor and entirely unreliable service being provided by Avanti West Coast. Everyone is unhappy with their service, from passengers to staff, but the government is still propping up Avanti after it extended their running of the franchise to April 2023. I recently wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport on this exact issue and questioned what the conditions were for this six month extension.
The main failure of Avanti is the number of disruptions to their services, making it difficult to travel with them and be on time. The service fails to run on time with almost 10% of trains being fully or partially cancelled in September, damaging the economy of Stockport. I am aware that the economic impact of these severe reductions in service are concerns which have been voiced by the Mayors of Greater Manchester and London, respectively.
I also have concerns about the accessibility of stations around Stockport, and have tabled a number of Written Parliamentary Questions about the timetable for rolling out step-free access at Brinnington, Davenport, and Heaton Chapel stations. Additionally, recently it has been announced that ticket offices may close, making ticket machines the primary method to buy train tickets. The RMT has revealed that 98% of ticket office staff believe that this change will make it harder for those with disabilities and mobility issues to use train services. I will continue to challenge this decision as I have been working towards making the train stations around Stockport more accessible.
For a long while, there have been problems with the working conditions for cleaners on railway operators across the country. I recently joined the “Justice for Cleaners” campaign outside the Department for Transport, calling to settle pay disputes among cleaning staff. I fully support this campaign for fair pay, sick leave, and proper holidays, and I was able to raise this – and a number of other issues – in a debate on West Coast Mainline services on 15th December. Since Avanti took over the franchise from Virgin, there have also been 175 job losses in catering roles, something which is evident when using the service. I have also challenged this with the Department for Transport.
More widely, it is worth noting the parent company of the TransPennine Express is FirstGroup and Avanti West Coast is a joint venture with 70% ownership by FirstGroup, which I raised with the Rail Minister in a debate at the start of this month. FirstGroup clearly has a track record of mismanagement.
The current train service is failing to act in the interest of passengers and I will continue to call out Avanti in the House of Commons. The North deserves more investment in the public transport network and I will push to make that a reality. Avanti’s continued running of the franchise renders the likelihood of a good service untenable. That’s why I support calls for the Department for Transport to bring the service under operator of the last resort, ensuring that it is publicly-run to benefit passengers, cut congestion on our roads and bring down carbon emissions.
