RMT seeks answers on compensation and payments
The RMT union has demanded to know how much money train companies were paid during the bad weather “under our rotten rail franchising system”.
In a statement on March 5, General Secretary Mick Cash said: “RMT will be raising this issue with the unions’ parliamentary group. And we are demanding answers, not the usual hot air we have come to expect from Chris Grayling and this Government.”
The Rail Delivery Group explained in a statement how payments received by train companies during severe weather work: “These payments are overseen by the rail regulator, which says that they keep costs down for taxpayers and farepayers, and they are completely separate from the money customers rightly receive for delays.
“The payments compensate train operators for lost revenue when fewer people travel due to disruption, and they encourage rail companies to work together to improve punctuality. The industry is changing and improving how compensation for delays is paid, which is why people received £74 million last year, five times more than five years earlier.”
RDG said the process works by delays and cancellations being attributed to a cause. Generally, this is Network Rail in cases of infrastructure failures or delays caused by external factors, such as the weather. Delay minutes and/or cancellations are then aggregated by cause and measured against a performance benchmark set by the Office of Rail and Road. Compensation is then made by NR to companies when aggregate performance is worse than that benchmark. Companies pay NR when performance exceeds the benchmark.
On March 6, following Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling’s letter to the RDG concerning the weather (see separate story), Cash said: “It stinks of rank hypocrisy for Chris Grayling to be thanking the private train companies for their actions during the adverse weather on our railways over the past week, the same companies who are set to scoop a bail-out jackpot from the public purse as they are compensated for any loss of income under the rail franchising racket.” He criticised Grayling for not mentioning individual cases relating to guards.