Matthew Offord – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Matthew Offord on 2015-02-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the performance of Govia in operating the Thameslink franchise.

Claire Perry

The Department’s senior officials attend four weekly meetings with the train operators senior management team, where all aspects of performance under the franchise agreement can be scrutinised and challenged. In terms of Govia Thameslink Railway’s (GTR’s) delivery of services to passengers, while operational performance on its Great Northern route is robust, performance on its Thameslink route has been poor.

Ministers and officials have held a number of meetings with Network Rail, GTR and the Office of Rail Regulation to discuss the poor performance on the Thameslink route. This has resulted in GTR and Network Rail publishing a high level improvement plan on their websites which sets out the actions they are taking to turn things around. They have also committed to updating the plan by the end of February with specific commitments on the outputs that will be delivered. Furthermore, the Department has secured a commitment that Network Rail and GTR shall provide a monthly report on progress towards their committed outputs and publish this on their websites, so that passengers have transparency on what is being delivered.

The Government is determined to hold GTR and Network Rail to account for the delivery of their joint initiatives to improve Thameslink performance and, ultimately, provide the levels of service that passengers deserve.