Avanti West Coast’s contract extended but ‘more improvements needed’

theguardian.com:

Ministers have given another contract extension to Avanti West Coast, saying the poorly performing rail operator had made improvements to services that were scaled back drastically in recent months, prompting chaos and a customer backlash.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, said that while he understood the frustrationsof passengers who had faced a big reduction in intercity services and a ban on most advance ticket sales, he had extended the contract for a further six months to the end of October.

Further improvements would need to be made by the operator if it was to continue to hold the contract, he said.

The rail firm, which runs trains between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, prompted outrage from passengers, business groups and devolved mayors when in August it imposed a drastically reduced emergency timetable.

Services on the busy London to Manchester route were cut from one every 20 minutes to one an hour. Tickets were not made available to purchase until a few days in advance, and then often sold out, making travel planning hugely difficult.

At the time, Avanti blamed “unofficial strike action” by the train drivers’ union Aslef. Aslef said this was a lie, and that the operator had been employing too few drivers and relied on routine overtime to run services.

In October, the Department for Transport (DfT) placed the operator on a six-month contract, saying it would lose the route if it did not “drastically improve services”.

A DfT statement on Monday said that since then, the introduction of a recovery timetable had reduced reliance on overtime and trains had increased from 180 trains a day to 264 on weekdays.

A rash of cancellations, which peaked at 25% in August, had fallen to 4.2%, the statement added,