Watchdog seeks answers on long-term performance

South Western Railway and Network Rail were summoned to a special Board meeting of passenger watchdog Transport Focus (TF) on January 9.

TF said the reason was a continuing fall in performance on services into London Waterloo, despite major investment in the station last summer that had failed to reverse a long-term decline in punctuality.

TF Chief Executive Anthony Smith said: “Passengers want a more reliable service and better information when things go wrong. While welcome investment is being made in South Western Railway, South Western and Network Rail must continue to work together to produce a more robust timetable.”

SWR Managing Director Andy Mellors told RAIL: “We took over last August. The reality is that for six or seven years, day-to-day performance on this network has been declining. We are very keen to address that trend, and we are working very hard with Network Rail to improve the performance of our services.”

Transport Focus said that performance on SWR has fallen in both the short and long term, with recent increases both in cancellations and in the number of trains that arrive more than 30 minutes late. It has criticised the way passengers have been kept informed during periods of disruption.

It has also investigated the number of trains or replacement buses that were showing incorrectly (or were missing altogether) from journey planning databases used by passengers.

Transport Focus found SWR had the second highest number of errors, behind Great Western Railway. Both franchises are operated by FirstGroup.