UK’s wheels are coming off

London – Britain’s model of contracting companies to run rail services is broken and the government should review it before awarding any more franchises, a parliamentary committee said yesterday in findings rejected by the Department for Transport.

It highlighted recent problems with two franchises – one in London and southeast England, the other linking London and Edinburgh – to illustrate what it called the government’s “completely inadequate” management of rail contracts.

“The franchising model is broken and passengers are paying the price,” said Meg Hillier, chair of the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

“If taxpayers are to have any faith in government’s ability to deliver an effective passenger rail network then it must conduct and act on a thorough review before any further franchises are awarded.”

The criticisms were rejected by the department for Transport, which said the report had failed to understand the complexity of the situation and called it “imbalanced”. “Our franchising model already puts passengers and taxpayers first,” a spokesperson said.

Passenger and freight rail services in Britain were privatised in the ’90s, when routes were grouped into franchises and operators bid to run services for a set number of years. The network infrastructure track is owned and managed by the government-owned Network Rail.

The Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise, operated by British company Go-Ahead and France’s Keolis, was beset with delays and strikes in 2016-17, prompting huge criticism from passengers and lawmakers.

On the East Coast line between London and Edinburgh, the government could end up taking over running services from Stagecoach, a franchise that has already failed twice. – Reuters