Southern Rail to be handed £20m bailout
Outcry as we pay to repair firm’s trains ... and clear leaves on line
MINISTERS were last night facing fresh calls to re-nationalise Southern Rail after revealing that £20million of taxpayers’ cash will be used to ensure more trains run on time.
The rescue package includes extra cash for Network Rail staff to clear leaves from the line and fix faulty tracks.
A new board, headed by former Virgin Rail executive Chris Gibb, will oversee the changes, which will be implemented as quickly as possible. But it was described as a ‘sticking plaster’ by one MP, who claimed it would make little impact.
The decision to use public funds to bail out Govia Thameslink Railway, the private firm that runs the Southern network and is a third French-owned, has incensed opposition MPs. Describing it as a ‘reward for failure’, they claimed this strengthened the case for bringing Southern back into public hands.
The row erupted as train guards prepare to stage a 48-hour strike next Wednesday and Thursday over the decision to hand responsibility for opening and closing train doors to drivers. A separate strike by station staff over the closure of ticket offices – also organised by the Rail Maritime Transport union and due to take place next Wednesday – was suspended yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of commuters across the South East have endured months of disruption following a wave of strikes and engineering works.
In its first major intervention in the debacle, the Department for Transport said its package of measures would ‘improve the performance’ of the Southern network and ‘restore passenger confidence’.
It includes a £2million investment to double the number of Network Rail ‘ rapid response teams’ to fix faults in the track.
Another £2.5million will be spent repairing trains more quickly, while £800,000 will be invested in employ- ing more signal supervisors. The Department for Transport told the Mail a further £3.5million will be spent on helping to prevent ‘seasonal delays’ – which means employing more teams to clear leaves and foliage from the lines to prevent disruption.
Extra staff will also be drafted in at key stations, including East Croydon and Gatwick.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘I want the Southern network to be run by a team of people who work together to make sure passengers get decent journeys and that problems are dealt with quickly. We also need to get to grips with the things that go wrong on this part of the network.’
But he also accused trade unions of an organised ‘campaign of disruption on the network’.
Labour politicians criticised the decision to divert more public money to prop up the struggling rail franchise.
Robert Flello, a Labour member of the Commons Transport Committee, said: ‘There is no comfort in this for the commuter. In the grand scheme of things £20million is a drop in the ocean – it’s a sticking plaster and a cheap one at that.
‘Commuters will think sweeping leaves off the line more quickly is not going to make much difference – particularly if they haven’t got a train in the first place.
‘This feels like a reward for failure. If Southern can’t do the job then this railway needs to be put back into state ownership’.
London mayor Sadiq Khan also criticised the Government’s plans, which emerge just weeks after his offer to take responsibility for the struggling franchise was rejected. He described Southern as an ‘embarrassment to London’.
Some 341 trains a day have been axed since the beginning of July after an emergency timetable was introduced.