Industry | 2009.11.06
Back to BR as train service nationalised
• Train service taken over from next Saturday
• Public ownership will last for at least 18 months
Back in the day, British Rail was synonymous with soggy sandwiches, late trains – or no services at all. Deserved or not, it was a reputation that became immortalised in the comedy, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin – every morning, his train to Waterloo was reliably late, but always for a different reason.
From next Saturday, though, the government will get a chance to make some amends, when it returns as a long distance train operator for the first time since privatisation in the mid-90s.
Passengers on the prestigious London to Edinburgh route have been promised punctuality, good food and clean loos.
The Department for Transport has seized control of the failed £1.4bn National Express East Coast franchise. Apart from a stint running the Southeastern service earlier in the decade, the government has ducked complaints over fare hikes and poor catering by letting the private sector take the flak – and the profits.
That will change when the DfT launches the frugally titled East Coast franchise with the aim of keeping the route under public ownership for at least 18 months while funnelling the proceeds into its coffers.
Elaine Holt, the head of East Coast, said the 18 million annual passengers will soon notice improvements to facilities and complimentary first class meals. "There are areas where customers are not satisfied when they should be, like toilets. There is a whole raft of things that can be improved."
Holt said the free food for premium passengers – "they just get a biscuit really" – will be beefed up, although the upgrade might extend to pastries and peanuts only. The trolley for passengers in standard class will also get a makeover, with Holt pledging that any changes will reflect a specially commissioned passenger survey. "Customers told us they want different things," she said.
Punctuality is already strong, with nearly 90%services on time but Holt pledged further improvements.
With the reassuring tag line of "business as usual" the most noticeable changes will be cosmetic, with the National Express logo excised from all trains and station signs by the end of next month.
The DfT is banishing the name of a company that defaulted on its contract just two years into a decade-long deal after it said it could not afford franchise payments, leaving ministers with a £1.4bn hole in the rail budget.
It was the second time that the route had been handed back in three years, following in the footsteps of GNER in 2006, prompting calls from Labour backbenchers and trade unions to scrap the rail franchise system.
Next week\'s launch of East Coast has given some hope to privatisation\'s critics but Holt warned rail nostalgists not to expect a return to the days of BR. She won plaudits at the private train operator FirstGroup and pledged a commercially aggressive approach in her new role.
"I don\'t see this as a step backwards into some sort of BR or public sector-type environment," she said. "It is a commercial company that happens to have the government as its owner."
BR was replaced by the ill-fated Railtrack when the network was sold off, while train franchises were carved out of individual routes such as east coast and auctioned to private operators.
Railtrack\'s chaotic demise in 2002 is seen by many within the industry as an indictment of privatisation, amid fierce criticism of the steep fare increases regularly imposed by franchise owners.
Holt admitted that East Coast will impose the above-inflation fare hikes that National Express was planning for January, even though the new business will not have to meet the franchise payment of around £180m next year that helped derail the route\'s former owner. "I am not going to sit here and say that just because we are a government-owned company we are going to slash fares."
She added: "Like any train company, we will be making the equivalent of premium payments to the DfT. They will not be in the order of £180m per year. If we were to make the same payments as National Express the franchise would be in trouble again next year."
East Coast is expected to increase the price of some advance and off-peak fares that are not protected by price caps, drawing criticism from green groups who see the East Coast transfer as a chance for the government to wean long-distance travellers away from planes and cars.
Cat Hobbs, of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "We want the government to make sure it runs the franchise in passengers\' interests and does not go ahead with fare increases. We also want the DfT to keep the franchise in the public sector beyond 2011 as a benchmark to see whether other franchises provide value for money."
The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, is determined to strip National Express of its remaining franchises, the Essex commuter services National Express East Anglia and c2c.
The RMT, the largest rail union, believes all 16 major franchises should be brought under public ownership. "The failure of the east coast franchise for the second time should kill off the rail privatisation policy which has been an expensive disaster," said Bob Crow, RMT general secretary.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]xpress-east-coast-nationalised
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