Oral evidence: Rail timetable changes, HC 1163

Oral evidence, 18 June 2018.

Witnesses

Charles Horton, Nick Brown, David Brown and Rob Warnes.

Chair

We have quite an audience today. Before we begin, I am sure we have all seen the news that three young men were killed on the railway at Loughborough Junction this morning. We do not yet know the details, but I am sure our thoughts go out to their families and friends, and of course to the railway staff and the staff of British Transport police who have been affected by the incident. Welcome, and thank you for coming along today. For the record of our proceedings, please introduce yourselves by giving your name and the organisation you represent.

Nick Brown

I am Nick Brown. I am the chief operating officer of GTR.

Charles Horton

I am Charles Horton, the chief executive officer for Govia Thameslink Railway.

David Brown

I am David Brown, MD at Northern Rail.

Rob Warnes

I am Rob Warnes, performance and planning director at Northern.

Luke Pollard

I declare an interest. Prior to being elected I did some work with Go-Ahead and GTR.

Chair

Thank you. Before I get into the questioning, I want to give voice to some of the issues that passengers have experienced in recent times. A lot of them have contacted me on social media, so I am going to share a few of their comments. One GTR user said: “Week five of this timetable in chaos, and it’s as bad as day one.” Louise, another passenger, says: “It’s horrendous. Trains are dangerously rammed. Standing rigid for the whole journey, which is often way longer than it should be. Unable to move your arms. Trains are cancelled with no notice, and we pay thousands of pounds a year for this diabolical service.” Rose says: “The current debacle was the final straw that pushed me into quitting my job in London two weeks ago.” Rosalind says: “Lost income from not being able to get to work. My professional reputation is being tarnished. Suffering severe anxiety. I can’t sleep because I’m so stressed about how I will get to work.” Dan says: “I now have to leave too early and get home too late to see my young daughters at all during the week.” Dan makes the point that his delay repay compensation simply does not make up for the impact on his life. That has been the experience of too many passengers on the networks that you represent. We know that the reasons for that have been put down to lack of train drivers, overrunning infrastructure works, and rolling stock not being available as expected. All of those have contributed to the timetabling chaos that is having a real impact on the lives of real people. Charles and Nick, in relation to GTR, is there a single contributing factor on your part of the network about why the introduction of the May timetable has been such a spectacular disaster?

Charles Horton

There is no single cause of what happened. This has been a systemic failing of the industry’s timetabling system, which has had the devastating consequences on our customers that you outlined. We are very, very sorry for that. All of us here today feel deeply sorry that customers have had that awful experience. In terms of why this has happened, certainly in the case of GTR, the biggest challenge we have faced is that, normally, when there is a major timetable change we would expect the timetable to be finalised at least 12 weeks in advance of it starting. On this occasion, we were finalising the timetable three weeks before it started. All the detailed, complicated resource-planning tasks that we would normally spread over at least a 12-week period we had to complete in a three-week period. That caused us multiple problems in terms of the deployment of our drivers to that new timetable, with, ultimately, a gap between the drivers we had available to us and the skills they held and the work that we were requiring them to do, with the resulting cancellations and delays that are ongoing.

Chair

Can you remind me when you became aware that Network Rail was not able to meet the T minus 12 timeframe for providing the new timetables?

Charles Horton

We have been working with Network Rail since we put in our timetable bid last August. We have been working alongside Network Rail to get the timetable established, but the process became extremely protracted and was complicated by a number of changes that happened during the timetable development process. One of those changes was that a decision was taken to phase in the timetable. That was made at the end of October 2017.

Chair

Whose decision was that?

Charles Horton

That was a decision made by Ministers following a process of development in the industry to look at options for changing the timetable structure. It was a decision ultimately taken by Ministers, in which the industry had been involved. The effect of that phasing change was not clearly understood in terms of its impact on Network Rail’s processes. The result was that that, combined with some challenges in getting the timetable established, meant we were into April before we had the timetable finalised.

Chair

Would it have helped if that decision by Ministers had been made earlier, and could it have been made earlier?

Charles Horton

I do not know whether the decision could have been made earlier. What I can say is that in any timetable process the earlier you make a decision on specification, the better it is in terms of your ability to establish the timetable effectively. That changed specification was not the only issue we were facing. As I said previously, the slow pace of getting the timetable finalised also meant that we were challenged.

Chair

Do you hold Network Rail timetabling staff responsible for the slow pace of getting things agreed, or were you yourselves putting in revisions to what you were bidding for in the new timetable?

Charles Horton

That goes to the heart of the inquiry that the ORR have put in place. As an industry, we really need to step back and look at what has gone on, and look at the systemic issues that caused it to happen. Clearly, there are multiple causes when something like this happens. I do not think it is right to start pointing fingers at people. What I want to do is to make sure that somebody looks at this in a cool and objective way and says, “What could have been done and when? What sequence of events led to this situation?” Then we will get to a proper answer in terms of what could have been different and how it could have been changed.

Chair

You said that you could not be clear about whether the decision around phasing could have been made earlier than October 2017, although I think the recommendation around phasing was made some months earlier. If the decision could not have been made earlier, could the timetable introduction have been postponed?

Charles Horton

Because our timetable interworks with five other operators and three Network Rail routes, any decision to delay the timetable would have had a significant impact on other operators as well as GTR. You would have to find an appropriate point in the timetable development process to make the decision that you no longer wished to proceed. At the stage where we were in October, none of us believed that the phasing decision would cause, along with other things that went wrong, the level of problem or challenge that we subsequently experienced.

Chair

At what point did you realise that the timetable was not going to be delivered?

Charles Horton

At every step through the process we were seeking to find work-arounds and ways of dealing with a delay to the timetable. We had to make some assumptions, for example, about the deployment of our drivers to new depots. That was one of the things that was necessary to make the timetable happen. We also did some work on draft work schedules for drivers. Even though the timetable was delayed, we were trying to do our best to find ways to get around the problems we were facing. It was only in the final stages of finalisation of the timetable, and our need to resource that timetable, that we started to become aware of the scale of the problems. In that final few weeks, we encountered multiple issues. The final major problem that caused the major disruption we have was when we applied the drivers’ work schedules to their work rosters and found the mismatch in skills.

Chair

Do you think you were honest with yourselves about your capability to find work-arounds for that problem?

Charles Horton

I think we were being honest with ourselves. We were also trying to approach it in a positive, collegiate and collaborative way as an industry. We were not seeking to do anything other than deliver the right outcome for passengers. The changes we were seeking to put in place were very important. The boost in capacity that the changes were planned to deliver, the improved journey opportunities and the better connectivity of services were very important objectives that we wanted to achieve. I am terribly sad and terribly sorry that it has ended as it has. Our job now is to try to take the situation we are in at the moment and get it back on track as quickly as we possibly can.

Chair

In terms of your realisation that it was proving very difficult, and ultimately proved impossible, to deliver the timetable changes, tell me about the relationship, the contact and the communication you were having with the Department for Transport.

Charles Horton

We were keeping the Department for Transport apprised of the challenges that we were facing. We were also describing to them the mitigating actions that we were seeking to take in the lead-up to the introduction of the timetable. There were regular calls and contact with the Department. Maybe Mr Brown could say a word or two about what he was doing at that stage as well. Nick was having a very close relationship with the Department as well.

Nick Brown

We were briefing officials in the Department, as Charles said. We were also working on the work-arounds, as we described. We had two phases of last-minute problems. The first one was around the work schedules for drivers. Once we receive the timetable, we have two tasks. The first is to develop what we call diagrams, which are work schedules for the trains and for the people who drive them around the network. The issue only became apparent at the point when we started to do that with the drivers’ work schedules. We normally go through a series of iterations to optimise and balance those work schedules. That normally takes place in the last 12 weeks of the timetable. We were not afforded that; it went from three months down to three weeks. Then there is the final phase, which we call the roster phase, applying work schedules to a roster in a depot. That happened on the Thursday night before the timetable changed on the Sunday. That was the second phase where we realised that there was a skills mismatch between the assumptions that we had made for the location of the train drivers through the whole project, and which had been in place for over a year, and the actuality of where the work had fallen.

Chair

Had it really changed that much, so that at the last minute you did not know what staff had been trained, where they were or that they were not capable of operating?

Nick Brown

We know where they are and where they work, but the balance of how the work schedules fit to the work roster is what caused the challenge. We notified that immediately to the Department.

Chair

When you said earlier, Mr Horton, that three weeks out you realised that it was not going to be possible to deliver, did you communicate that to the Department?

Charles Horton

No; what I said was that because of the way in which the work schedules were coming together—the diagrams as we call them—we started to see an increased risk at that stage, but we did not see the scale of the problems that were subsequently experienced.

Chair

Did you communicate how serious a risk that was?

Charles Horton

We said that we saw an increased risk of cancellations in the immediate aftermath of the timetable being introduced. That was what we said we were seeing. We also said that we were taking action to try to mitigate that as much as possible by making some changes to the way we were organising part of the operational plan for the timetable. It was something called piloting; we were getting drivers to go with other drivers through part of the centre of London. We made changes to plans whereby we brought in some other staff to do that task and released some drivers back to do driving duties to help us get out of that difficulty. That was typical of what we were doing throughout the whole process. We were looking for solutions to problems and trying to find a way to deliver what we thought and believed was a very important change.

Chair

Mr Brown, you will have an idea of what I am going to ask you. I suspect the issues are slightly different on Northern. What were the factors that contributed to the problems that your passengers have experienced?

David Brown

The first thing is that a timetable change that was supposed to be a significant upgrade for people in the north of England clearly was not delivered in a way that gave that additional connectivity. We have apologised to our customers many times. I do so again today. We are truly sorry that the timetable and the service that was provided in the first two weeks of the timetable clearly affected people travelling not just to and from work but for major life events as well. I am personally truly sorry for that. We have been working really hard to put in place an interim timetable. The root causes of our problems are slightly different from those of Charles and Nick. We were on track to deliver our timetable in May this year. We started the process in July and August last year. It is a process that normally takes 40 weeks, about 10 months. We were on track. We had more than enough train drivers to provide the service that we were looking to operate in May this year. We have more train drivers than the company has ever had, and far more than we need to operate the timetable. The big issue for us was that the timetable was predicated on certain pieces of infrastructure being delivered, such as the electrification in the north-west of England, particularly the axis between Preston and Manchester and out to Blackpool. Our timetable plan was based on that corridor being operated by electric trains. The scheme had already been delayed. It was originally planned for December 2016 and then December 2017. It was delayed further, and was then planned for May this year. The decision was taken on 5 January this year that the scheme could not be delivered at the time we needed for our plans in May this year and would, therefore, be delayed beyond the May introduction of the timetable. That meant that Rob’s team and people in Northern and in Network Rail had to plan the whole timetable in a period of 16 weeks rather than 40 weeks. We had to look at options for completely rewriting a timetable for the north of England, which is 10% to 11% of the total national rail network, in four months—16 weeks compared with 40 weeks. We made a request that the timetable already in place should be rolled forward into May. That request was declined. We were, effectively, the only train operator that was requested to start again and completely rewrite—

Chair

Sorry, can you say that again? At what point did you ask for the introduction of the timetable to be delayed?

David Brown

At the end of January there was a conversation about options.

Chair

With whom?

David Brown

It was an industry conversation with other train operating companies and with Network Rail as the system operator. A range of options were generated. Clearly, our preferred option was that our timetable and the national timetable were effectively rolled forward, so that what was in place then would be seen again in May. A significant number of other players did not want that to happen, and that option was not the preferred or chosen option.

Chair

Was that information communicated to the Department?

David Brown

The two events—the delay in the infrastructure and the electrification—were a decision taken at a north of England programme board. The core members are the Department for Transport and Network Rail. That then led to the subsequent conversation about the timetable and what structure the national timetable would take from May. Our client is Rail North partnership, a joint venture between the Department for Transport and Transport for the North. They were aware that we were being asked to rewrite our timetable. The system operator has to look at the whole national timetable and take a decision based on all the train operators and the total timetable. Our preferred option was declined at that point in time. That meant we had to rewrite the timetable for May this year. Again, very similar to my colleagues on the right, the timescale to rewrite the timetable was massively truncated. I am not aware that it has ever been done before.

Chair

Were there further discussions? In January, you asked for the timetable process to be extended, and that was refused. As you tried to implement the timetable as planned, I am guessing that it became clearer that you were not going to be able to succeed. Did you ask again?

David Brown

No. At that point, the decision was taken that the option chosen was that Northern would effectively withdraw our piece of the national jigsaw, change the shape of it and then try to reinsert it into the process. We had 16 weeks to do that. The other thing to stress is that part of the decision on the electrification meant that additional engineering work was required on the corridor. The same team that tried to rewrite the timetable then had to plan for successive engineering blocks during the period between February and September. The base plan was being rewritten, and the short-term plans were also being rewritten. We were rewriting the plan at that point. The second element was that at that point in time we had more than enough train drivers, and we had a training programme that would have hit and enabled us to deliver the May timetable. A further infrastructure scheme was delayed. We were notified in the middle of March that the electrification scheme between Blackpool and Preston would be three weeks late, and therefore would not be delivered until later in April. That might seem quite a small issue, but it effectively means that all the drivers who operate on that line can request retraining as if it is a new piece of line. For us, that meant that 450ish drivers could all require, and needed, brand-new training. That was never in the training plan. That new training requirement was a direct consequence of the delayed electrification. Finally, as we were rewriting the timetable in short order, very similar to colleagues, it scrunched down and screwed down the time we had available. That then led to a new training requirement, because we are not running electric trains on part of the network. We are looking at running diesel trains on different routes. That stimulated a further driver training requirement. We were trying to plan the base and deliver a new driver training requirement for Blackpool, as well as identifying the gaps between what people were trained to do and what they were then required to do. We only started to see that emerging, literally, in the days before the May timetable went live on 20 May. In the first week of the new timetable, as a team, we immediately started to identify a plan that we could put in place to arrest the poor performance. On 29 May, after just over a week of the new timetable, we shared with our client an interim timetable, which reduced on a structured basis the number of trains we were providing for an eight-week period, and allowed us to give stability and a bit of certainty for customers. That went live on 4 June.

Chair

Can I stop you there? I want to understand a bit more about communication during the period after you had realised there were major problems because of the delay of electrification and the further infrastructure delay that impacted on you. Schedule 9.4 of the Northern franchise agreement sets out what happens when there is an infrastructure-related change. It talks about there being a process of “regular and effective reporting by the Franchisee” to the Department. It talks about “discussion and engagement leading to appropriate decision making…and the taking of appropriate risk mitigation actions on a timely basis.” It talks about that happening throughout the period, so the Department knew that there were already issues. They had rejected your request back in January. What discussions or engagement, as per the franchise agreement, were happening in the period between January and 20 May?

David Brown

From the point that the infrastructure assumption was changed, there was ongoing dialogue with our client, Rail North partnership, on behalf of the DFT and Transport for the North. They understood that the assumption had now changed and triggered that part of the franchise agreement, as you say. They were fully aware of that. They were fully aware of the fact that we were the only ones asked to rewrite the timetable. All the train operators, including those in the north, were allowed to stay with their existing timetable. They were fully aware of the decision that had been taken by the system operator and the industry. The issue at that point was that we were trying to rewrite the timetable and understand where there would be a mismatch of skills and resources. We were working very hard to do that and deliver the timetable. Clearly there was ongoing dialogue. At that point, the whole scale of what was likely to happen in May was not apparent. We were busy writing the timetable from scratch. Once we became aware of the slippage in the Blackpool issue, the client was aware that it would trigger ongoing training requirements not just for Blackpool but for those 450 drivers. We have had regular dialogue with the Rail North partnership at officer level, but it was only just before the timetable went live on 20 May that the full ramifications and the culmination of all those events became apparent.

Chair

What date was that?

David Brown

We communicated with stakeholders on 17 or 18 May. We were aware that in the timetable we had re-planned there were some structural weaknesses. We were not able to offer the timetable we wanted to offer because of the short notice on which it had had to be rewritten. Bear in mind that we were trying to put our piece of the jigsaw back into a national jigsaw, when everyone else’s pieces were still in place.

Chair

Literally, until the last two or three days before the timetable was introduced, you did not see it coming. What understanding would the Department have had at that point? You were working hard to try to mitigate the risks, and then, only a few days before, you say, “Actually, this is going to lead to thousands of cancellations.”

David Brown

They were clearly aware of the additional training requirement we had for Blackpool. You can see the deterioration and the increase in cancellations during April up to the May timetable. At that point, we were trying to run the train service, and to train drivers we did not expect to have to train. The culmination of that was that we were piecing together the rosters and the diagrams only days and evenings before—literally—to such an extent that for the first two weeks of the timetable we were in a situation of emergency rostering. We were trying on a daily basis to match drivers, conductors and train units. The full impact only became apparent when the timetable went live.

Iain Stewart

I want to get some clarification. Going back to January, when you realised that there were overruns and it was going to be very challenging for you to enact the new timetable, you say that your request to roll forward the existing timetable was denied by a partnership of other operators and your client. Is that right?

David Brown

In the industry, there is a set of ongoing discussions with the train operators and Network Rail. We formally wrote to the system operator, which is Network Rail, to suggest that one option that could be considered would be to roll over the whole timetable. That option was declined; it was not the chosen option.

Iain Stewart

When that was declined did you, at any time, pick up the phone to the Department and say, “Look, this is serious and you need to look at it afresh. There needs to be ministerial involvement”? Did you do that at any time?

David Brown

We had an ongoing dialogue with the Rail North partnership. They were fully aware of both the infrastructure slippage and the fact that we would now have to do a 40-week task in 16 weeks. They were fully aware of that decision. I assume that the system operator will advise Ministers if there is considered to be a risk to the national timetable.

Iain Stewart

I am trying to get to the bottom of how much you pressed, as the operator, and went straight to the top of the Department to say, “Look, we need more time and we need the existing timetable rolled forward.”

David Brown

I accept that it may be a criticism that we did not shout louder and earlier in the process. At that point, the task was to rewrite the timetable. There is a balance in crying wolf and saying there is a big problem and being able to quantify exactly what it looks like. Because the timetable process is sequential, you only realise that right at the last minute. Normally we, like all train operators, would have all of the technical documents 12 weeks in advance, so that we could understand where the risks were. Clearly if you are only starting that 16 weeks out, you do not have that opportunity. Did we shout really loudly at that point? All the officers in the Rail North partnership were fully aware of the challenges that we faced, but our task was to get on and rewrite the timetable, because at that point it was not clear what the full consequences would be; plus the impact of the additional training from Blackpool did not become apparent until April.

Grahame Morris

I am sure you are aware that, under the terms of reference of the Committee, we want to know when it was realised there was a serious problem with the proposed timetable changes, who was told and when, and why those changes went ahead. The problems are rather different for the two operators. Mr Brown, you told us that you were running 10% or 11% of the network, and that in January you identified the potential problems with the system operator, Network Rail, and other operators. Was it suggested then that phasing might be an option—to withdraw that 10% or 11% and phase it? Would a determining factor in deciding whether to phase be any revenue implications of doing that?

David Brown

I will hand over to Rob because he is involved in the options that were developed, and then I will answer the question about revenue.

Rob Warnes

I do not think phasing was a real option because the timetable structure in the north was changing, with TransPennine moving to their new six paths an hour across the Pennines. Northern services, like most local services, are what we call “last on the graph”. Our services are put on the timetable plan last. Long distance goes on first, and TransPennine moving to its new structure meant that we had to rewrite our entire structure across the north. As electric trains were not able to operate on the Bolton corridor, we had to pull back on to the Bolton corridor all the diesels that were planned to go off and do other things. We very carefully had to try to knit back the basic service that we were operating in December around the new TransPennine structure and around some of the other long-distance operators that were changing as a result of GTR services down south. That meant there really was not a phase; it was all or nothing. That is why we suggested that perhaps we should take the original December and roll it to May. Once we were not in that position, we had to fit as best we could around all the other operators so that we could actually produce a train plan for the north from May and have a timetable to operate.

David Brown

On the revenue point, that is not a conversation in which I was directly involved. There are clearly commercial considerations if TransPennine is asked to change its timetable and we are asked to change our timetable. I do not know what the decision-making process was for that. Under our franchise, there is an infrastructure assumption that is now different, and we will have to have a conversation with the Department about that.

Grahame Morris

I am interested in whether or not revenue considerations were a factor in the decision-making process. You might have conversations about them with various operators and Network Rail, but were they the determining factor or a contributing factor in the decision to go ahead?

David Brown

It was not a direct issue for us. We wanted to deliver the timetable in May. It was clear that we would not be able to do that, and therefore for us, for customers and for operational reasons, rolling over the existing timetable would have been the best option. The commercial considerations were not a key part of that decision making. Whether they were a part of the decision making by the system operator or the Department, you would need to ask them.

Chair

Can we be clear about who stopped your plan to roll over the timetable? Was it Transport for the North? Was it DFT? Was it other operators? Was it Network Rail? Or was it in some way a consensus decision?

David Brown

If I can be really clear, there was a discussion among the train operating companies and Network Rail. We asked for that option to be considered.

Chair

Where does that discussion happen? Is there a body that brings them together?

David Brown

There is a body, which I cannot recall; it is effectively a working group. I guess the main decision is the one taken by the system operator, because they are looking across the whole timetable. I have to say though that the vast majority of train operating companies did not want to roll over their timetable, because of operational and commercial imperatives.

Chair

Are you saying that your client, Rail North, and the DFT were not part of that decision making, or were they part of it?

David Brown

I cannot tell you absolutely whether they were part of it, but they were clearly aware of the decision that was taken.

Graham Stringer

You are saying that you are not aware who took the critical decision. David, that does not sound credible.

David Brown

I am clear when the decision was taken. The decision was taken after a set of options were put. That was the decision by the system operator, together with support from the train operating companies. The question was whether I was aware if the DFT and Rail North partnership were involved in that decision making. I am not aware whether they were or not, but they were aware of the final decision.

Graham Stringer

That was the question I was asking. Charles Horton said he did not like finger pointing, but in one sense, we want to know who was responsible. You are saying that you do not know who was responsible for not allowing you to adjust the timetable.

David Brown

I am saying that the option we put forward was not accepted by the system operator, Network Rail, or supported by other train operating companies.

Graham Stringer

So it was Network Rail.

David Brown

They are the system operator.

Graham Stringer

Yes. On their own they said no.

David Brown

No. There was a conversation with all the train operating companies. They took options and agreed the preferred option. I assume it is the system operator that makes the final decision, as the responsible body for the national timetable.

Graham Stringer

I have tried to listen carefully but I do not quite understand. I understand that you did not have the timetable you wanted. You did not have the rolling stock that you were expecting to have. You did not have the infrastructure in part of the system that you were expecting. You were trying to put the jigsaw together and knit the pieces together as best you could. I know you to be a professional and competent man. You must have known that if you did not have the right rolling stock there was the potential for the kind of catastrophe that has happened. Did you pick up the phone to the Department, to the Secretary of State’s office, and say, “This is going to go badly”?

David Brown

To be absolutely clear, in January we had more than enough drivers and conductors to operate the timetable that we were planning to operate in May. We had more than enough rolling stock to operate at that point in time, but, as Rob said, once a decision is taken not to electrify, you cannot use electric trains. You have to move diesel trains from elsewhere in the north to replicate that. At that point, the rolling stock resources and the timetable changed. There was adequate rolling stock to provide that timetable. Rob’s team made huge efforts to bring in rolling stock from elsewhere, so we had adequate rolling stock at that point in time. That has become stretched because we are not using electric trains where we are supposed to be using them. We are having to use diesel trains from elsewhere in the north.

Graham Stringer

I understand that there is a problem because the infrastructure was not as you expected, the train sets were not as you expected and therefore the drivers—even though you had plenty in January—were not necessarily trained. The question I am asking is, given those huge problems, did you not shout and say to the Secretary of State or the Department, “We have been denied the timetable change that we think would be helpful and now other things have gone wrong, so this is going to be a very major problem”?

David Brown

At that point, we were not aware of the full consequences. We were busy rewriting the timetable. As I said earlier, two things happened. We then had a significant additional driver training burden because of the delayed electrification to Blackpool; 450 drivers—

Graham Stringer

I accept that. I am just saying that these are such big problems. You said you only had 16 weeks to write the timetable. I accept that as a fact. But the problems were bigger than whether you could write the timetable. I am surprised that a man of your professional background and experience did not say, “This is not going to fit together.” It is not just writing a new timetable and getting Network Rail and the other operators to fix it. It is a huge problem.

David Brown

It is, and because the timetable process was so truncated and it is sequential, until you write the base plan you do not become aware of the full consequences of the mismatch between skills and location until the very last minute. That is a similarity between ours and Charles’s story, in that the timescales mean that you do not become aware until the very last minute of the actual size of the problem. That is why we tried to work very hard and put in place a change to that timetable.

Graham Stringer

You are saying that the last minute was 18 May.

David Brown

It was literally right up until the last minute, because we were still producing the outputs of the timetabling process.

Graham Stringer

How much has cancelling all these trains cost you?

David Brown

I do not know the exact financial value but we clearly do not benefit in any way financially from cancelling trains, either on the day or on a planned basis. We have put in place an interim timetable that reduces the number of trains we are running by about 6% or 165 trains. They are classed as cancellations. That is not saving us money in any way. It is aimed at giving customers certainty of the service we can offer.

Graham Stringer

You surprise me with your answer. Are you saying that you do not know how much it costs to cancel each train?

David Brown

I do, but I do not have the detail to hand. I am happy to send it afterwards.

Graham Stringer

You will send us the figure for the total cost of the cancellation.

David Brown

I am happy to provide that.

Graham Stringer

I think you are trying to answer a question I had not asked about whether or not there is a perverse incentive for cancelling trains rather than running them late. That has been suggested.

David Brown

No. There is no financial incentive for us to cancel trains. Clearly, our customers do not want us cancelling trains. We definitely do not want to be cancelling trains for them. We definitely do not want to be cancelling them as we were in the first two weeks, in short order. We have reduced the number of trains we are operating, so that we can provide more certainty to customers.

Graham Stringer

I am sure you will send us a paper, but can you give us a rough, ballpark figure for how much the train cancellations have cost?

David Brown

I would rather do that specifically than quote a number that might be inaccurate.

Graham Stringer

I am genuinely surprised that you cannot tell the Committee now. I guess it will be a big figure.

David Brown

Like I say, I would rather send you that and be accurate so that the Committee has it to hand in a proper way.

Graham Stringer

Is the crash that happened on Friday at Piccadilly station anything to do with the chaos around the cancellations and the systems?

David Brown

No. Last week, we saw a significant reduction in cancellations since we put the interim timetable in place. Last week was a driver error. It is still being investigated. The two trains involved are in their depot being repaired.

Graham Stringer

You say you did not realise until right at the end about the deliverability of the timetable. Were the people who were actually drawing up the timetable and into the nitty-gritty of it telling you anything about the deliverability of that timetable before 18 May?

Rob Warnes

At the beginning of May, when some of the plans were beginning to take shape, we identified some of the mismatches, where drivers would not have the knowledge to go on a certain route or take a certain train. The planning teams that work for me reallocated work. We were moving work from one depot to another so that we could match that work. We were therefore redirecting some of the training. It was an iterative process to try to constantly move, but, as David said, Blackpool overrunning tipped the training profile over the edge. That was the straw for us. We had a plan and we could do the training, but, when Blackpool went wrong, it imposed a load more training on us at the last moment.

Graham Stringer

Was there sufficient communication between the people doing that work? Is it the sort of issue that, if you had gone into a pub with the people drawing up the timetable, they would have said, “Oh, we are in for a right problem”? Did the people drawing up the schedules and the railway timetables know four or five weeks beforehand? Were their communications with top management good enough?

Rob Warnes

Not four or five weeks beforehand, because we had not actually produced what we call the train crew diagrams at that point.

David Brown

There is excellent communication between those train planners and our own staff and our regional directors, and a very good working relationship with Network Rail’s planners at Milton Keynes. They are a key part of that process. The timescales within which we had to deliver the timetable as well as plan the engineering work were unprecedentedly small. We would normally be in discussion on the detail 12 weeks before the timetable, but we were literally only starting to write that timetable 16 weeks before.

Graham Stringer

Is there anything else you would have done differently?

David Brown

On reflection, we would have flagged our concerns earlier, but at that point I could not quantify how serious the issue would be. Again, on reflection, we would have shouted earlier in the process when those key decisions were taken in January and February. At that point—it is a balance—we could not be clear what the full consequences would be.

Huw Merriman

I am still struggling to try to identify roles and responsibilities. For any change management project of this scale, one would expect to see a project manager and a sponsor who is looking to make sure the whole thing is done, with all the organisations that are required and a timetable. The project manager will sign off at each stage, meaning that, if there is an issue, it is caught early enough and communicated across the whole sphere. In that context, who was the project manager of the timetable change?

Charles Horton

It is difficult to describe railway timetabling in classic project management terms. If I may just explain who does what in the industry as a starter, and then describe how the particular arrangements worked with our timetable change, would that be helpful?

Huw Merriman

I am conscious of time.

Charles Horton

I will be brief.

Huw Merriman

Forgive me if I interrupt.

Charles Horton

In very short order, the DFT specify the services they wish us to operate. Train operators propose services to Network Rail under a bid process, and Network Rail compiles the timetable, and mitigates and deals with conflicting demands between operators. In relation to GTR, our train planning and timetabling team were working on the timetable bid based on the specification the Department had given us. We bid in August 2017 in accordance with the bid timescales. As I explained before, we had an issue when there was a change to the specification later on, which meant that we had to go back and rework that. We also had a slow process of timetable compilation and completion. In terms of how we were managing and structuring this, internally we had our own project management arrangements. We had a programme manager in charge. We had people tracking the programme. We were also working closely with colleagues in other train operating companies and with Network Rail. This was an industry change. As I explained already, we were interacting with five other train operators and three Network Rail routes, so there was an industry assurance process over the top of it. An industry readiness board was looking at the readiness of the industry to make this major change. An assurance panel was looking at the detail of the arrangements in our company, and in other companies, to make the changes happen. We were overseen through that process as well, but the ultimate responsibility to do our part of the timetable development was with us. Network Rail was there to pull the timetable together and to make sure that it was delivered.

Huw Merriman

Was the industry readiness board the project manager in that sense? When each organisation has its own project management team it suggests that this is a darned big project, yet there is no overall project management structure, where one party, who is not necessarily doing the delivery, is normally able to take a step back and get each of you to sign off by a set time, and blow the whistle when it realises that somebody has not. That is rudimentary change management, is it not?

Charles Horton

That would imply that the industry readiness board had a very executive role. They did not. Their role was to oversee and look at what was going on. Railway timetabling is hugely interdependent. All industry partners have a part to play in the development of the timetable. If you ask who had the ultimate accountability for producing the timetable, it was clearly Network Rail, but it could not do that without other parties playing their part in making sure that the timetable was delivered.

Huw Merriman

I acknowledge that, and I hope we all agree. It seems so obvious, with so many interdependencies between organisations, that if one organisation gets it wrong and the other organisation does not know, they are relying on delivery that they cannot actually do because somebody else has not done something. Taking a step back, it requires one big project manager to do just that. I am amazed that there was not a timetable or a project manager who went round and got sign-offs and reported to the Department and various others. I am staggered that that did not exist. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Let me put it another way: do you think there will be a role in that manner when the next set of timetable changes are due? How can we be assured that the same thing is not going to happen all over again?

Charles Horton

The big lesson for me from this particular problem is that we should never again embark on a major timetable change when the planning horizons have become compressed to such a level. We have proved, and unfortunately have ample evidence, that trying to squeeze major timetable change into a few weeks is fraught with risk and difficulty. Frankly, it is not something that I would ever wish to see embarked upon again because it is just too difficult.

Nick Brown

When those processes were running in parallel, they should have been running in series.

Charles Horton

To qualify what I said, I made that comment with hindsight. I did not think that at the time. We were seeking to get the job done and to get it sorted. It was only in the final run-in on the timetable that we started to see the risks ratcheting up and layering on top of each other to create the very bad consequence we have now seen.

Huw Merriman

I appreciate your openness in saying that.

Chair

It strikes me that the body that sits above all this must surely be the DFT. They are your client; they are in charge of Network Rail. Surely they should have oversight of this process.

Charles Horton

Certainly they have a role in the process. They are the specifier. They specify what the timetable should be. They have an oversight role over us and the contract we have with them. There is a commercial contract between ourselves and the DFT. They also clearly have a relationship with Network Rail, so they have a role in the process. Network Rail are the producers of the timetable. They are there to create the timetable, based on the inputs from train operators, and potentially to mediate conflicts between train operators to get a good result. That is pretty much as it is, and we all play a role.

Chair

We will have some questions for them in due course. Do you think that the DFT underestimated the complexity? You have already said there were five franchise train operators and three Network Rail routes. Did they just not understand what they were asking? It was 25% of the rail passenger journeys on the network.

Charles Horton

It would not be fair to say that they were underestimating. None of us saw the particular combination of issues coming together and producing this very bad outcome. In fact, in the last few weeks before the timetable was finalised, we had a number of things that went the wrong way, which have caused the problem we have now. For example, normally when we are producing a timetable and getting that timetable implemented, we produce diagrams—drivers’ work schedules. We iterate those two, three or maybe even four times. We were dealing with a situation where we had to take the first draft. The number of diagrams that we had was significantly greater than we had anticipated. Secondly, when we took the first draft diagrams we had to consult on them at breakneck speed. We got good co-operation from the trade unions, but inevitably there has to be compromise in that situation. Thirdly, when we got the final timetable and saw the assumptions we had made about where we would put our drivers, because we needed to redeploy drivers, we could have done a better job if we had known in advance where those drivers needed to be.

Chair

All the things you are telling me are, “This was the worst-case scenario,” and, “That was the worst-case scenario.” Would it be right to say that you underestimated the risks?

Charles Horton

It is true to say that, looking at all of those things together, I did not anticipate that all of them would go wrong. We were working really hard to try to mitigate and deal with those risks. We had some success. The problem was the final issue, which was the mismatch in skills because of applying the work schedules to the drivers’ rosters. That tipped it over the edge.

Chair

Were the meetings that you had with the Department one to one, or were they all via the industry readiness board?

Nick Brown

We had meetings through the industry readiness board with the Department, and we have normal franchise management meetings with the Department.

Chair

How regular are the normal franchise management meetings?

Nick Brown

We have monthly franchise management meetings and quarterly meetings. The industry readiness board meets every month and has done since January last year. On top of that, working on behalf of the industry readiness board, the industry assurance panel reports to the readiness board.

Jack Brereton

I want to ask about the finances. A number of the issues relate to infrastructure overruns, which are the responsibility of Network Rail. Are you set to be financially compensated by Network Rail for things that are outside your control?

David Brown

The way our franchise agreement works is that the timetable we prepare is based on a set of assumptions as to what infrastructure will be available. The timetable that we intended to deliver in December last year was delayed until May, and it has now been further delayed. That is a franchise change mechanism, so it is a request from the client—the Department for Transport—via the Rail North partnership to say to us, “What is the consequential financial impact of that change to the infrastructure?” We do that back to the client, through the Rail North partnership.

Jack Brereton

Yes or no?

David Brown

It will be funded by the Rail North partnership, not Network Rail.

Jack Brereton

You are not going to receive any compensation for the fact that there have been significant overruns on Network Rail’s project management of these issues.

David Brown

Our claim is through the Rail North partnership as the client.

Rob Warnes

There are two things. If the infrastructure is not delivered on time to enable a timetable, it is through a change mechanism. If it is engineering work, such as Blackpool when it overran by three weeks, Network Rail would compensate us for the three weeks of additional bus operations that we had to put in place.

Jack Brereton

You are going to receive some compensation for those overruns.

Rob Warnes

Yes.

Daniel Zeichner

To go back to GTR, I represent Cambridge, and many people in the east of England have had really bad experiences over the last few weeks. I want to go back to the franchise set-up. Peter Hendy suggested some years ago that it was undeliverable in the first place. Was it an unrealistic thing to try to do?

Charles Horton

No, I do not think it was. What we are dealing with is clearly a very serious systemic failure of the industry’s timetabling process, which has had very bad consequences on customers. Is it the wrong plan? No, it is not the wrong plan. Ultimately, the result for customers will be very good. We will see new journey opportunities opening up. We will see increase in capacity. We will see improvement in the quality of services. Certainly there will be more capacity, better trains, newer trains and more modern trains. The problem we have been dealing with is that the execution of the timetable has not gone well, and the consequence for customers has been awful.

Daniel Zeichner

But isn’t it the case that almost always in major projects things go wrong? You cannot necessarily predict which things will go wrong. Is sufficient contingency built into the plans to allow for the unexpected?

Charles Horton

Efforts were made to try to de-risk. The decision to phase in the timetable was made for the right motive, which was to try to de-risk things. Unfortunately, the execution of that created a further problem that we needed to get around. Similarly, during the initial phases of the timetable, we were looking to de-risk as well, and we had some plans in place to do that. The issue is that all of those plans and all of those efforts to try to de-risk the implementation were overwhelmed by the particular problem that we faced in the week before the timetable was introduced. We have been working since then to try to recover the position and get things back on a much more stable basis.

Daniel Zeichner

You are in a slightly unusual position. The Public Accounts Committee discussed the remedial plans you are working to. Does the latest remedial plan protect you from breaking the terms of your franchise agreement?

Charles Horton

We are still in a contractual regime. The DFT can enforce a franchise agreement on us. We are absolutely exposed to the DFT using its enforcement powers on us.

Daniel Zeichner

Going back to the previous question, how much is that going to cost you, potentially?

Charles Horton

It does not work like that in relation to GTR. GTR is in a situation where we do not receive any of the passenger revenue or any of the moneys from Network Rail in terms of its delays. We receive a fixed fee for running services.

Daniel Zeichner

Does this mean that you escape scot-free from this?

Charles Horton

No, of course not. We are exposed to the contractual regime. We are also bearing additional costs in dealing with significant disruption on our network.

Daniel Zeichner

It will be down to the DFT to decide the penalty that you pay.

Charles Horton

As it always is under any contract. It is for the DFT to make a judgment about whether we have met our obligations. In making that judgment, they will take a view on what they want to do if they feel that we have not. We believe we have, but it is for the DFT to determine.

Daniel Zeichner

You said that, looking back, you feel that the lesson from this is that you should not have compressed it into a shorter time. Given that it is a much bigger timetable change than anything that has been attempted before, surely every single alarm bell in your head should have been ringing at that point, knowing that it could not work once you had seen it was compressed into that time.

Charles Horton

As I said, it was only in the last week before the timetable change, when we saw the significant issue with the mismatch in the skills and the drivers’ work schedules, that we realised there was a much more significant problem than we had anticipated. We had seen and overcome a number of problems in the lead-up to the timetable implementation by taking action to try to address those issues. It was really a case of something at the very last minute finally tipping things over the edge. We had been successful in mitigating problems until then.

Daniel Zeichner

At that point, did you pick up the phone to the Secretary of State and tell him that?

Charles Horton

We were in dialogue with his officials at that stage; I think Mr Brown was speaking to his officials at that stage. We explained to them exactly the situation we were facing.

Daniel Zeichner

Can I press you? Do you have the Secretary of State’s number on your phone?

Charles Horton

No, I do not have the Secretary of State’s number.

Daniel Zeichner

Why not?

Charles Horton

I do not happen to have the Secretary of State’s number on my phone, but I have access to his officials.

Daniel Zeichner

Does he have yours?

Charles Horton

He does not have my number, to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know.

Daniel Zeichner

He should, shouldn’t he?

Charles Horton

I have access to the Secretary of State’s senior officials. If I need to get a message to the Secretary of State, or, if I need to say something to his senior officials so that they can get a message to him, we have the access we need to pass messages on and to speak to the relevant people in franchise management teams.

Daniel Zeichner

Have you spoken to him about this debacle?

Charles Horton

I have spoken to the Secretary of State about this. He has spoken to others about it as well.

Daniel Zeichner

Did he suggest you stand down?

Charles Horton

No. This was a decision I made myself. This was my decision. I took a judgment based on the facts. Looking at all the circumstances and looking at the fact that the industry had had a systemic failing of its planning system, I said to myself, “I am an industry leader and I feel that in the circumstances, it is right that I step down.”

Daniel Zeichner

You have taken responsibility, but shouldn’t the Secretary of State take responsibility, too?

Charles Horton

It is not for me to tell other people, either within or without the industry, what they should do in circumstances like this. I made a personal decision based on my assessment of the situation and my feelings about that situation.

Chair

You were talking about not realising the impact, particularly around the rosters and the training issues, until the last minute. One of the questions asked of David and Rob was whether anyone internally or externally was speaking out and saying, “Hang on, this isn’t going to work.” Were you not hearing that? Was nobody in GTR saying, “This is going to be a major problem”—none of the trade unions, none of the staff or none of the individual drivers?

Charles Horton

We were clearly aware of an emerging risk. As I explained, there were a number of risks we were seeking to mitigate. We were in active dialogue within and outside the company about the issue. We were speaking to colleagues in Network Rail, as well as to colleagues in the Department, about the issues. What we were seeking to do, as it was our belief that it was the reasonable and responsible thing to do, was to find ways of mitigating a problem. We were very close to the implementation of a timetable. If we had said a week before, at the last minute, “Right, let’s stop doing this,” the consequences would have been even worse, across multiple franchise operators.

Chair

Was anybody saying to you, “This is not working. This is going to be a disaster”?

Charles Horton

It was only in that final week, on the Thursday before the timetable came in, that we realised the problem was more serious than we expected.

Chair

Before that final week you are saying that nobody—none of your staff or the trade unions—was saying to you, “This is going to be a problem.”

Charles Horton

There was an active dialogue within the company, realising and looking at problems we had identified. There was also an active dialogue within the company to find solutions to those problems. We took many steps to try to tackle those issues in the final period before the timetable was introduced.

Nick Brown

It is worth mentioning, Chair, that the training programme for train drivers was never intended to be fully complete prior to 20 May. It was always going to run through 20 May, and that tied in with the phasing programme that the DFT authorised. As a consequence, not every driver was going to be trained on every last piece of route. We had to make a set of assumptions, as Mr Horton described. I met some train drivers in passing, because I was out and about on the network. I was able to explain to them how that part of the plan was going to work. The work allocation for a depot would not require every driver to have that knowledge. We made and presented to the industry readiness board the assumptions, over a series of months, as to how we were going to train sufficient drivers to carry that through. Exactly as Mr Horton said, it worked and the contingency we had in place at the time of the timetable change meant that we had enough train drivers. It was the mismatch of skills and locations in the quantities that we needed, driven off the inability to optimise the drivers’ schedules once we had received the timetable, that caught us in the last couple of days.

Grahame Morris

I will be brief because we are overrunning. On the training issues and the skill mix, I appreciate that David Brown said that as far as Northern Rail was concerned there were sufficient drivers, but there were issues about the skill mix. The problems are slightly different for GTR. In terms of anticipating requirements, particularly for GTR where the same issues were not involved—Blackpool and so on—and with the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done to try to resolve the problem, and to ensure that it does not happen again when the next timetable change comes in December?

Charles Horton

The answer is that by taking sufficient time in the planning phase, between the timetable being established and its being implemented, we could have found a way around a lot of the problems. We simply ran out of time to do what we would normally do when we face a major timetable change, which is to look for options to optimise things. We would have deployed the drivers in different locations, because when we saw the final timetable we realised that some of our assumptions were not quite right. We would have had more time to optimise the drivers’ diagrams. We would probably have done that two, three or four times. The consultation with employees would have been undertaken at a much more sensible pace than we had to do it, and we would have had more time to tackle the sorts of issues that we faced around changing our plans for piloting drivers and mitigating the skills gaps where we put them in place. That is why the period before the timetable introduction—the 12 weeks—is absolutely essential. If you can establish a timetable before 12 weeks out, which is all the better, you can do even more to deal with those sorts of risks.

Grahame Morris

I understand the nature of the network and the train operating companies. Our concern on this side of the Committee is about fragmentation and the problems that creates. Were there opportunities to work with other train operating companies to try to improve opportunities for training, maybe on electrified stretches of line that were not in your operational area? With hindsight, are there any lessons to be learned?

Charles Horton

One of the strengths of what has clearly resulted in a bad outcome for customers has been that there has been good co-operation across the industry, both overseeing the arrangements for the timetable change and having active dialogue between train operators and with Network Rail to make sure that we look for opportunities to do the sort of thing you said. Other companies have stepped up and helped us deal with the situation we are now facing to try to do a bit better for customers. The co-operation has been strong. It is simply about the fact that we are squeezing an activity that we would normally do over a much longer period of time into such a compressed period.

Grahame Morris

How much longer do you think you will have to rely on instructors and drivers from other companies to operate the services? How much longer will it be before you have sufficient trained drivers with the right skill mix to operate the services?

Nick Brown

We want to keep the piloting programme in place for a good few months yet, as an insurance as much as anything else. The programme has been in place for some time and we want to keep it going until all our drivers are trained through the core part of the network, which is key to the whole operation. There are other elements of learning as well. As I mentioned to the Chair just now, the programme for the whole introduction continues, with the train drivers being trained in other elements over the coming months.

Jack Brereton

I want to dig a bit deeper into the issue of training new drivers. We need to know a bit more. David Brown, you mentioned the fact that there is almost an anomaly in that drivers have a right to request new training, although there might not have been significant changes to the route. Why is that?

David Brown

The thing that triggered the additional training burden for us was that the infrastructure was closed for more than six months because of the delay in delivery. It is just a statement of straightforward fact. It was three weeks longer than it should have been, and it meant that the line was closed for six months. That triggers, quite rightly, the fact that drivers have to have training as if it is a new route. Even though it is only a small extension to a construction programme, it has significant consequences for the number of drivers. That was never in our plan, so part of introducing 450 drivers to this new route, effectively, was triggered by that six-month period.

Jack Brereton

How substantial would that training be if you were going to start on an entirely new route compared with training on a partial change of route? There must be some difference in the length of time?

David Brown

If it had been delivered within the six months, the training requirement would be far slimmer. That is within the programme. As soon as you go over the six-month period, drivers are entitled to a significant increase in the amount of training—at least five round trips on the route. Bear in mind that our drivers operating in Blackpool come from right across the business, so there are people from Liverpool, from Buxton, from Manchester and from Leeds and so on, because ours is such a complex and interwoven network. That training burden was not in the plan. It was only triggered because the infrastructure was delivered later than programmed.

Jack Brereton

These are set down in the rulebook for drivers. How long is it since it has been reviewed and updated?

David Brown

It is in the terms and conditions negotiated by the trade union for drivers. It varies across the country in different places. We are constantly looking to modernise those terms and conditions. We have a very good working relationship with drivers, but clearly when there is a new piece of infrastructure we want drivers to be fully trained.

Jack Brereton

How long is it since there have been improvements and full reviews of that rulebook?

David Brown

It is an ongoing process. It is not easy to sit down and just revise it.

Jack Brereton

So there have been none.

David Brown

Yes. There are ongoing discussions. We have just agreed an arrangement with ASLEF that, working forward, we will look at putting in place a new modernisation programme for them. Part of that will be looking at the overall terms and conditions for all the drivers across Northern.

Jack Brereton

Charles and Nick, do you want to add anything about the rulebook and whether it needs to be fully reviewed and updated?

Nick Brown

To give you an example, if I may, the closure of London Bridge to through trains for GTR meant that from January this year, when it was reopened, our drivers needed to be route-learned on the section between there and East Croydon, which has substantial amounts of new and very complicated infrastructure. There are very different patterns. Our first objective is to do that safely and in consultation with trade union members. As to changes to the rulebook, it is inevitably a huge logistical task to make sure that you get your train drivers across routes sufficiently frequently, especially where long distances are concerned. In the Thameslink network, the distances are longer, inevitably. We need to ensure that they retain that knowledge over what we call a roster cycle, their normal pattern of work.

Chair

Is that route knowledge important to safety?

Charles Horton

Crucial.

Nick Brown

Yes.

Chair

It is not unreasonable that it appears in the rulebook; you believe it is necessary for safety.

Charles Horton

We do a detailed risk assessment for every route that our drivers drive over to make sure that the specific risks and hazards associated with that route are understood. We then train our drivers and make sure that they are aware of those risks. It is very easy to get into the mindset that it is something like a car, with colour light signals and things like that. You might think it is like that. It isn’t. You need to know which signal you are required to obey. You need to know absolutely what speed you should be operating at on different parts of the journey. You need to know what particular hazards and risks there may be on that part of the network. All that knowledge needs to be in your head, and you need to be able to use it without thinking, in an unconscious, competent way. It is not a trivial matter. It is absolutely fundamental to the safety of the railway.

Nick Brown

Day and night, and in all weathers.

Chair

People watching might have got the impression that these things were inflexible and unreasonable. I wanted to know from an industry perspective whether you believe that to be the case.

David Brown

No. As Charles said, it is absolutely essential for the safe operation of the railway.

Iain Stewart

We have covered most of the questions I was going to ask. I have a couple of supplementaries on one of the potential contributory factors for Northern. You were expecting a number of trains to be transferred from Scotland to bolster the new service pattern. Those have been delayed because the electric trains in Scotland had to be modified, and some of the HSTs were not delivered from the works in time. To what extent has the late arrival of those trains contributed to the problem?

Rob Warnes

In fact, it has not affected us. If anything, the work we have been doing with ScotRail has been very beneficial. We are to receive quite a lot of those trains later in the year. Scotland were able to give us some trains a bit earlier, and that has helped us. We were able to train our drivers in the Leeds area and are now operating four of those trains on the Leeds to Harrogate to York line very successfully. They have been very helpful to us, and we have been helpful to them in making sure the programme fits with some of the challenges they have with electrification.

Iain Stewart

Nigel Harris in an editorial in Rail magazine pinpointed that as perhaps one of the contributory factors to short formations of existing services. Is that not correct?

Rob Warnes

Not in the Northern network, no.

Iain Stewart

I have a final question. You have had a number of industrial disputes in recent months. Has that been a contributory factor?

David Brown

No. The RMT union is in dispute with Northern about our plans in the franchise for driver-controlled operation, but that has not affected this issue in particular.

Iain Stewart

It has not been about overtime bans or anything like that; it has been a case of drivers not being able to drive trains.

David Brown

No, separately we had a rest-day working agreement in place until December last year, which was extended to February. At that point, ASLEF decided not to extend the agreement further, but reinstated it on 7 June.

Iain Stewart

Predating that, didn’t it contribute to the issue?

David Brown

They decided not to extend the rest-day working agreement in the middle of February this year. We wrote to them asking them to extend it, but they declined. That in itself adds a little bit of pressure to our training programme, but is not the root cause of it. The root cause is the additional training burden from the rewriting of the timetable and the Blackpool electrification.

Steve Double

I would like to look at the role of the industry readiness board. What was the IRB told in the run-up to the May timetable change?

Nick Brown

As I mentioned earlier, the industry readiness board has been sitting since January last year and has reviewed all the plans through the industry assurance panel. As I mentioned earlier, our proposals have been laid out for the assurance panel and reviewed and reported on at the industry readiness board. My colleagues and I reported to the industry readiness board at the 4 May meeting, but not just at that meeting, where the challenge was around the quantum of work schedules, or diagrams, as you have heard, that came up as a consequence of the compressed timetable publication and then our work on it. We updated the board on that, and we identified what the risk was.

Steve Double

What did you tell them? Did you tell them that you had significant concerns about the impact?

Nick Brown

We said at the meeting at the beginning of May that there was a risk of cancellations as a consequence of the work we had not been able to do on the optimisation of the diagrams, and in consequence there would be a risk for a period of time—a few weeks—until that was mitigated. Also, as a consequence of the timetable process and what had come out of it, the gradient of improvement of the training programme that we had, which continued through 20 May and beyond, would be lowered slightly; and until we picked that up we would still need to put mitigation in place. Finally, we identified what mitigation we had put in place and what the risk was around that.

Steve Double

I am sorry to probe further. You said you had identified risks of cancellation. How high a risk and how many cancellations were you predicting at that point?

Nick Brown

The industry assurance report that went into that industry readiness board flagged it as red as a consequence of the diagram scrutiny process.

Steve Double

What was the scale of the cancellations?

Nick Brown

It was hard to determine at that point exactly how many it would be, because we were still putting the mitigations together, but it ran into several 10s and up to 100.

Chair

Can you tell me what red means in that context?

Nick Brown

High risk.

Chair

That was what I assumed. I just wanted to check. That was at the meeting on 4 May.

Nick Brown

Yes.

Steve Double

Do you believe that the IRB had opportunities to change the course of events?

Nick Brown

As we said before, this was a highly complicated timetable change, with many parties involved. There was almost a group-think: “Actually, what change could you have brought about at any point in time?” As a consequence, the mitigations we were able to identify at that point were the ones we placed our faith in. They were not the only mitigations. There were plenty that we and others were making as part of the programme. As we have said, it was the coming together of all those unforeseen things.

Steve Double

I appreciate that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but do you believe the IRB could have done any more at that point to call for a delay or postponement of the changes?

Nick Brown

If it had, the implications would have been worse because of the interworking across three Network Rail routes and the five other operators that were dovetailing with us. One of the complications of the timetabling process, which is a multi-party thing governed by the system operator, as I mentioned before, is that things that perhaps should have happened in parallel were actually happening in series. That is why the time ran out. Holding the mirror up, it was the fact that time was slipping away from us. Although we were working very hard to mitigate the situation, at the time we made the call to brief the industry readiness board, we were not aware of the problem that came three days before the timetable change. It was exactly the same as in Northern, where the rosters are drawn up and the work is applied to them. At that moment, we realised that the skills mismatch with the location, and the skills and competence of the drivers to know those routes, was the late presenting thing. We did not know that at the last readiness board we had.

Chair

You flagged that up to the industry readiness board as red. What is the point of the industry readiness board if they get a red flag but do not do anything?

Nick Brown

The readiness board was looking to us to help mitigate that. As it was flagged up from the assurance panel, it is one that you would probably have to ask other members of the readiness board about. They were obviously looking to us. It was not the only red flag that was there. There were others. We had lived with them for many months and mitigated them to varying degrees.

Luke Pollard

Does the IRB publish its minutes?

Nick Brown

I would need to check, but I think it does.

Luke Pollard

Would you be comfortable sharing minutes, especially of the meeting of 4 May, with the Committee?

Nick Brown

I would have to defer to the chairman of the industry readiness board on that.

Luke Pollard

But there is nothing that you would think could not be shared with the Committee investigating this. There are no skeletons in the closet in those minutes.

Nick Brown

Not as far as I am concerned, no.

Luke Pollard

It would be helpful to be able to see them, to see what is going on. I want to ask about the new timetable change. Do you think the system is fit for purpose when it has two major changes of timetables in May and December, as we currently have at the moment?

Nick Brown

That is a very big question for one part of it. As we have described, our view is that the ORR must do its review into why this set of circumstances has come across two of the largest franchises in the country, and why a set of circumstances arriving at this point in time has given our passengers such a dreadful experience. It is clear that collectively the industry processes have failed, and have failed passengers. We welcome the review if it helps identify a way forward through the industry processes and how they may need to be changed to deal with change on this scale. This is a culmination of huge investment in the rail network, in particular in the south-east to deliver the Thameslink project, and what we have done behind that. In terms of being found wanting as far as what we finally deliver to the passengers is concerned, we question whether the processes are as fit for purpose as they could be.

Luke Pollard

The Gibb report suggested that the timetable changes be phased in over eight different changes, which was eventually reduced to four different changes. In the changes we are expecting in December, what proportion, compared with the ones in May, will you be planning in December?

Nick Brown

Most of the eight phases happened before 20 May. The first phase of what was the rephased part was 20 May, and that was endorsed by the Department for Transport in autumn 2017. The changes step up, with an extra two trains per hour sequentially. The plan is for December, for May, and then for the following December. Our experience thus far has been that we want to tread very carefully and very cautiously as to what the next step up would be. It would be unwise after this experience to promise to do something at this stage that actually took on even greater risk and possibly exported risk to other parts of the national rail network.

Luke Pollard

You were speaking about how many weeks you need for preparation of timetables. There are not that many weeks to prepare, based on the numbers you gave, before the December timetable. Are you confident that the December timetable change will go smoothly?

Nick Brown

The issue around the timetable change comes back to the phasing as well a little bit. As Mr Horton described before, we bid our proposed timetable to Network Rail through the system operator, in accordance with the industry processes, in August last year. The proposal that came back from Network Rail in November needed further work. The phasing of the timetable had then been endorsed by the Department. That was one of two elements that actually led to the increase in workload as to why the timetable development was protracted over a period of time.

Luke Pollard

That seems a lot of words to use instead of saying, “Yes, I think it is going to go smoothly in December,” “No, I don’t think it is going to go smoothly,” or “I don’t know.”

Nick Brown

It is giving you the background to understand that we have to get the timetable straight now.

Luke Pollard

Which of those three options do you think you are in? You do not know whether it is going to go smoothly, you think it will or you have concerns.

Nick Brown

We want to get this timetable as right as we possibly can, with the ingredients that go into it, as we have described, and then take a view for December. The planning process under the industry rules is under way for December as we speak.

Luke Pollard

Have the DFT asked you to do anything differently with the next timetable change?

Nick Brown

Not at the moment.

Luke Pollard

With the state of chaos that was caused in this one, you have had no instructions, given the management contract you have with the DFT, to do anything different for the next stage.

Nick Brown

I expect the Department to be in discussion with us soon as to how we front up to the December timetable and subsequent stages, but I think their focus, as is ours, is definitely on getting this timetable right, as it is for our colleagues in the north.

Chair

I have two final questions. I will ask you to write to us about others. Just now you said there were several red flags, but it still went ahead. Do you think that was wise?

Nick Brown

Red flags come and go from the assurance panel in the industry readiness board. They have come and gone over the 18 months.

Charles Horton

May I explain? Normal business in the assurance panel is that it highlights a risk. We have a discussion about the risk and how it can be mitigated. Once the mitigating action is taken, you would expect the risk to come down in terms of its level of severity. That is the normal process, and in my view the assurance panel is doing its job then. If it highlights a risk—

Chair

But it did not do its job, and that is what we are trying to understand.

Charles Horton

We are explaining that that was a particular risk that emerged very late in the day, and the time to take mitigating action was much compressed. That was the issue we faced, but there was an active process within the industry and within our company to look for risks, to identify the risks and to take mitigating action. That is responsible and sensible project management in those terms.

Chair

But in the end ineffective. David, I want to ask a question about Northern. You said earlier that you had all the rolling stock you need at the moment. Can you explain to me why we still have the Lakes line running with buses?

David Brown

Within a week of the timetable, we pulled together a plan that reduced the number of trains we were operating for an eight-week period through to the end of July. That meant that we planned on the basis that we could tell people that those trains were not running rather than having short-notice cancellations. That has added and brought a lot of stability to the network. It has given customers a lot more certainty about what we are doing. Part of that was temporarily to withdraw the train service on the Lakes line. That is partly because we need to get the drivers from Barrow and Blackpool trained on that network. That was one of our outstanding training requirements. Secondly, the level of service we were providing there was not fit for purpose for customers. The decision that we took was to provide a high-quality coach and bus service to give people certainty. It was something we put in place, and we have now agreed with the Department for Transport and Transport for the North that we will reintroduce train services on that branch line on 2 July. That is when we will be confident of providing a higher quality of train service, and it will be reintroduced on 2 July.

Chair

I don’t know whether passengers will feel that the certainty that there are no trains is an adequate answer. Time has defeated us. I am going to ask you a number of questions and I want you to write to me with the answers, if you don’t mind. These are particularly important to passengers, but also to the Committee. First, I want to know what steps you are taking to put things right, and when you expect those steps to take effect, so that when people come to the station, the train you have said is operating will operate. I particularly want to understand why the emergency or interim timetables are not being adequately delivered. Why is there still a level of cancellations? I appreciate that those things will not be exactly the same on the two different networks we are talking about. Secondly, I want you to explain why communication with customers has been so poor. We have seen comments about the quality of information on websites. Staff at stations are not adequately briefed or able to answer people’s questions. There are some pretty appalling responses on social media, and people have been blocked from social media for asking perfectly legitimate questions. We would like to know what you are doing to compensate passengers and when that compensation will be paid. Finally, although I know we have touched on this, how do you think people can possibly feel confident that December’s timetable change will be implemented effectively, given that it is even bigger than the one that has just taken place in May? I look forward to your responses. We may call witnesses back at a later date. That concludes our questions to the first panel today. Thank you. Examination of witnesses

Witnesses

Jo Kaye, John Halsall and Martin Frobisher.

Chair

Welcome, and thank you for coming along. For the record of our proceedings would you please introduce yourselves?

Martin Frobisher

My name is Martin Frobisher and I am managing director for the London north-western route for Network Rail.

Jo Kaye

My name is Jo Kaye. I am the managing director of the system operator part of Network Rail.

John Halsall

I am John Halsall. I am the route managing director for the south-east route for Network Rail.

Chair

This is primarily a question for you, Jo. Network Rail describes the timetabling process as “a very complex process that seeks to balance the ambitions of all train operators.” Are timetable changes made predominantly for the commercial benefit of train operators and freight operators?

Jo Kaye

Timetables are changed for a number of reasons, predominantly to provide more or different journey opportunities for passengers. They may be faster journey times, they may be connections that did not exist previously between cities or they may be to increase the frequency of services. There are a number of things that might drive a train operating company to suggest to us that they want to make a change to their services.

Chair

Do you think that changing the timetable every six months produces sufficient demonstrable benefits to passengers across the network? Are passengers seeing an improvement to their services?

Jo Kaye

Clearly if those changes go well—obviously I would be the first to say that this one has not gone well, a fact for which I am deeply sorry—they can provide significant benefits. The fact that the timetable changes twice a year has emerged from custom and practice in the industry, right from when railways were first invented. If the process is followed properly, it effectively gives a stable amount of time both for the timetable to be constructed and for operators to get ready for the change in the way you have just heard witnesses talk about.

Chair

Describing it as “not gone well” is something of an understatement. You have just heard the evidence we have taken. Given the problems identified, shouldn’t Network Rail have told the train operators that the timetable was going to be rolled over, perhaps for six or eight weeks? Could that have been done? If it could not have been done, why not? If it could, why didn’t you do it?

Jo Kaye

Maybe I can give a bit of context to the background to the May 2018 timetable change, which I think will help answer your question, although it may take me a moment or two. The May timetable change was the biggest that has been attempted on the network in recent history. It was four times the average that we have done in previous changes, and was the culmination of a huge amount of investment in both the north of England and the south-east. The first version of the timetable was completed on time in November last year, but three things then happened that made the timetable we had just completed invalid. The first was that we discovered that the electrification of the Bolton line would not be completed on time, so that element of the timetable needed to be rewritten. The timetable that we had completed simply could not work without that infrastructure in place. Secondly, in the south of England, as you heard, the Thameslink phasing decision was taken. Given that that decision was to downgrade the level of risk expected in the timetable, again we felt we had to attempt a rewrite to manage better the risk that people foresaw. Thirdly, from a national perspective, although it is not the key focus of this Committee today, the non-availability of some rolling stock in Scotland meant that the timetable we had written for Scotland was not going to work either. The culmination of those three things forced us to rewrite huge elements of the national timetable, and that rewrite is the thing that took us longer than we had hoped. It obviously severely compressed the amount of time that operators had for readiness for May 2018, on which you have just taken evidence from them.

Chair

I am not sure I got an answer to my question. Could you have rolled it over for six or eight weeks? Could you have given yourself the extra time you just said you required?

Jo Kaye

If we had rolled the timetable over, we would have had to roll over the whole national timetable. There are a number of operators operating on the network today. The national timetable is a culmination of all those things pieced together, and they all work together. For example, Northern works across parts of the network that are also heavily used by other train operators. There was not the simple option of just continuing with one plan for one operator, because we had already made changes for other train operators who use the same infrastructure. That is why we had to rewrite the timetable rather than just roll it over. To roll over the national timetable would have lost the benefits of the May timetable change for other parts of the network.

Chair

But would it have been better to maintain the existing timetable for a longer period to allow that rewrite to happen? I understand that it would have delayed benefits for some people, but you are setting that against causing massive disruption for something like 35% of the network.

Jo Kaye

Absolutely. You have taken evidence from our colleagues that we all believed that the mitigations we were putting in place and the rewrite we were doing would produce a better outcome for passengers. That clearly turned out not to be the case, but the intent of the rewrite of the timetable was to manage those risks better and to deal with the consequences of the non-availability of rolling stock and infrastructure to produce a better outcome for customers. We believed—albeit with hindsight that was clearly incorrect—that those things could be managed in the time available and still deliver the timetable change.

Chair

Did you consider delaying the implementation of the timetable?

Jo Kaye

As Northern stated, they asked us to consider rolling over their timetable. The difficulty was that we could not just simply maintain one operator with one plan when other train operators were moving to a different plan. When a timetable is so interlinked in that way, that simply is not possible. That is why we went for the rewrite option.

Graham Stringer

Surely it would have been possible, given the level of chaos that has ensued on what we are told is 11% of the network, to delay the whole system. A lot of passengers would have been better off.

Jo Kaye

It was an option that was considered, but it was discounted because we believed that the mitigations we were putting in place, and the rewrite that was attempted, would be delivered in time to enable the timetable change to go ahead, with all the benefits for others, in a controlled way.

Graham Stringer

Do you regret that decision?

Jo Kaye

Clearly that is one of the things I look back on and ask myself whether or not we could have foreseen the consequences of proceeding with a timetable rewrite in quite the way they manifested themselves. Yes, I would probably look at that decision again differently. That is absolutely why we are looking very hard again at the plans for December and asking operators to re-examine their ambitions for the December timetable change, so that, if changes are necessary to what people want to do in December, we can handle those now and give them the maximum possible amount of time to prepare for December.

Daniel Zeichner

You say “we” made that decision. Was the Department for Transport part of the decision-making process?

Jo Kaye

The decisions surrounding timetabling belong to the whole industry. There is a network code that covers those things, and it covers all the industry parties. The individual decisions on the deferral of the Bolton electrification and on the phasing of the Thameslink timetable implementation had a level of DFT involvement in the way that was described by previous witnesses.

Daniel Zeichner

But was that overall big decision—a really big decision about the trade-off of potential benefits against potential risks—made by the board that brings all those people together? Was it made by you? Who finally made that decision?

Jo Kaye

We have previously described that at a national level there is no single organisation or guiding mind that would make that decision. Those things were done appropriately, and had DFT involvement in the specific circumstances. Ultimately, the decision to proceed with the rewrite was something that the system operator proposed, after discussions with the industry, and that was accepted.

Daniel Zeichner

I am not sure that I understand that answer.

Chair

Accepted by whom?

Jo Kaye

By the industry. The code that runs the timetabling process is owned and managed by the industry.

Chair

Who was party to the discussions where you decided, “Okay, these are the risks of going ahead. This is what we are planning to do. This is the mitigation and we think we can do it”? Who signs that off? Who is in the room when that decision is made?

Jo Kaye

Many industry members are in the room. In the case of the Bolton electrification deferral, for example, there is a programme board. It has Network Rail representatives; all the train operators are involved in it, as well as some of the client organisations you have heard from, and the Department for Transport. It is very much an industry decision-making process.

Iain Stewart

When you were considering and rejecting the call to roll over the timetable, did you or anyone else say, “Hang on, we need to escalate this right up to the top of the DFT”? Did anyone make that call?

Jo Kaye

I do not think we can evidence that that was the case. As we have described, the industry is very much in the mindset of identifying and mitigating risks. We all believed right up until the very last minute, as previous witnesses said, that the actions we had taken and the mitigations we had put in place would address those risks. That clearly turned out not to be the case.

Iain Stewart

We heard from Northern that it was aware in January that there was a significant problem. Did no one say, “Hang on, this is going outwith the usual risk element”?

Jo Kaye

Everyone in the industry was clear that the decisions we had to take to rewrite the timetable were outside the normal industry processes. That was very clear in all the discussions we had, but I go back to the fact that, if the infrastructure was not going to be available, it would have been foolish to continue with a plan that simply would not work. Similarly, the decision to phase Thameslink was about reducing the risk of the implementation of that timetable. Had we not proceeded with a timetable rewrite, we would have been attempting to make an even bigger change in May. In the case of Scotland, you have to have the trains to enable that to work. Those decisions and the risk mitigations were believed to be the right and proper ones at the time, in the circumstances we faced.

Chair

Does the network code specify the whole timetabling process?

Jo Kaye

It does, yes.

Chair

Do you think it is too inflexible? Should it be changed? Was it changed in any way ahead of that major timetable change?

Jo Kaye

The network code has had some minor changes over the years, but in essence it has existed in its current form for a number of years. This and other circumstances have led me to believe that it is time for a rewrite of the code. It has strengths in some ways, in that it sets out adequate amounts of time for planning if things are followed properly, but it clearly has weaknesses when, for reasons perhaps beyond your immediate control, you are not able to stick to those timescales. We would certainly be very supportive of looking again at the network code. I would expect that to be a feature of the ORR review of the overall process. I expect that they would be very interested in what elements of it could, and should, be reviewed. We would support the review and would be willing to participate fully.

Chair

Yes or no: were any changes made to the network code ahead of May?

Jo Kaye

No significant ones, no.

Chair

Do you anticipate any changes being made to the network code ahead of December?

Jo Kaye

No.

Chair

I want to check some of the timelines and compare them with what we heard earlier. On the Bolton electrification, were you saying that you became aware of that in November rather than in January, as Northern said earlier?

Jo Kaye

No. Martin will comment in more detail, but the decision to delay Bolton was taken in January.

Martin Frobisher

I would like to start by saying sorry for the difficulties that we have caused to passengers. I live in the north, and friends and family have seen the effects that this has caused. I am particularly sorry for the impact we have caused for Mr Stringer, his constituents and others. The context is the great north rail project. We are doing a vast and complicated upgrade of the network, and the north really needs the great north rail project. It is absolutely essential to improve the infrastructure for the north. We had some difficulties with the project, particularly on the Bolton line. We had some very difficult ground conditions. We started sinking pile foundations and they filled with running sand. We took a closure of the line and there was a water main burst at Moses Gate, so we had to focus on fixing the bridge abutment rather than doing the work. That put the project behind. By the time we got to 5 January, we faced a choice, either to close the line for five weeks to proceed with the project and get it built, which would have involved busing in 10,000 people per day from places such as Bolton, or to do the May timetable on a different basis, in compressed timescales. We sat down with all the industry parties—the Department for Transport, Rail North and the train operators—and took the decision that the right thing was to do the May timetable in compressed timescales. We believed that was better than closing the line for five weeks.

Chair

Do you think that was the right decision?