Lord Roberts of Llandudno – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Roberts of Llandudno on 2015-11-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they take any steps to monitor whether lavatories on franchised train operator services are in working order throughout train journeys; whether any sanctions have been imposed on any franchisee as a result of that monitoring in the last two years; and if so, what those sanctions were.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

We are investing record amounts in the railways in order to give passengers better journeys. We expect the industry to deliver the best possible customer experience every day, including the provision of appropriate toilet facilities.

Whilst there are no regimes that separately monitor lavatory quality provided on trains by franchised train operators, the Invitation To Tender for the new Greater Anglia franchise is piloting three challenging customer service targets to be monitored through mystery shopper exercises and passenger surveys. One of these Key Performance Indicator (KPI) targets is “presentation of facilities”, which includes questions about “the cleanliness of the toilet facilities” and “the condition of on board toilets” amongst other aspects. Financial penalties will apply if the KPI targets are not met. Various quality of service regimes exist in other Franchise Agreements for monitoring and managing overall train interior quality, some of which carry financial penalties. The National Rail Passenger Survey also reports specifically on “On Train Toilet Facilities” for every operator in its twice yearly survey.

No sanctions have been imposed specifically in regard to train toilets.