FURY AT FAIL RAIL BOSS £380K EXIT
He quits after cancellations fiasco but still nets a fortune
A RAIL boss who quit after a timetabling fiasco left thousands stranded was given a £386,000 payoff.
Accounts show Govia Thameslink Railway chief Charles Horton got the sum in lieu of notice.
New chief Patrick Verwer took home £482,000 last year as the operator promised to “learn” after regulators fined Govia £5million over the cancelled trains fiasco.
Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald blasted the pay packages, saying: “Charles Horton’s salary and severance payoff on stepping down from his management of the disastrous performance of GTR, which caused so much misery for commuters, is nothing short of obscene.
“Yet again, failure has been rewarded. If anything could lay bare the sheer dysfunctionality of the fragmented and fractured privatised railway, this has to be it.”
Accounts just published for 2018-19 show Mr Horton was paid £386,000 as a “contractual payment in lieu of notice”.
He quit a month after passengers faced huge disruption as hundreds of trains were cancelled following new timetables introduced on May 20, 2018.
The company even had to put on taxis to make sure students could get to their exams on time.
GTR – Britain’s largest rail franchise – changed the time of every train on its timetable.
Passengers were warned of disruption before the changes were brought in, but the timetable saw some services withdrawn and further cancellations without warning.
Mr Horton appeared with Network Rail representatives at a Commons hearing to answer questions about GTR’s role.
The fiasco saw more than 8,000 trains cancelled in the first three weeks since the change on GTR, plus 5,000-6,000 on Northern Rail.
Last December it emerged GTR is now the most punctual major rail operator – though one in four trains is still late.
The Office of Rail and Road released figures which showed that 71.2 per cent of all GTR trains ran on time – a 7.4 per cent increase year on year.
A spokesperson for GTR said it did not comment on salary arrangements. alan.selby@ mirror.co.uk