Mr Bacon said: “Lord Adonis should be in no doubt that Norfolk’s growing appetite for rail travel is currently being unfulfilled.
“Norfolk must not be treated as an after-thought at the end of the line. The new franchise for East Anglia must give our constituents a first-class rail service on clean, modern and efficient trains”.
The Rt Hon Lord Adonis
Secretary of State
Department for
Transport
Great Minster House
76 Marsham Street
LONDON SW1P 4DR
29 January 2010
Dear
Lord Adonis
greater anglia rail franchise
We are writing with
regard to your recent decision not to renew National Express East
Anglia’s franchise, which was announced in the House of Lords on 1
December 2009.
We welcome your
decision not to renew National Express East Anglia’s franchise for a
further three years. Passenger Focus’s Spring 2009 TOC report into
National Express East Anglia (NXEA) perhaps explains why few tears have
been shed over this decision locally. The TOC report finds that over
half of NXEA’s passengers did not believe they got value for money for
the price of their ticket and a majority of passengers are also not
happy with the availability of NXEA staff, standards of cleanliness and
the competence with which NXEA tackles delays. Many local residents,
particularly those who regularly travel to London, were also dismayed
that NXEA ceased to provide a restaurant car and closed its
Norwich-based call centre.
Your department will
soon be seeking fresh bids from Train Operating Companies for the
Greater Anglia rail franchise. Before any decision on the new franchise
holder is taken, it seems to us that this would be an appropriate moment
to reassess the needs of Norfolk residents with regard to the
specification for the Greater Anglia franchise.
Norfolk is a dynamic
county and a centre of excellence in science, engineering, finance and
the creative industries. A number of internationally-renowned research
organisations call Norfolk their home and the John Innes Centre, the
Institute of Food Research, the Sainsbury Laboratory and the new Genome
Analysis Centre together form the largest concentration of food and
plant scientists in Europe. Norfolk engineering companies trade around
the world with organisations like Airbus, NASA and Toyota, and Lotus are
driving forward the next generation of high-performance cars. After
two centuries, Norwich remains a major centre for the financial
industries, with over 50 national, international and regional companies
based here and the county is also a major centre for the creative
industries. By the time NXEA’s franchise expires on 31 March 2011, the
population of Norfolk is projected to grow by 5.3 per cent, or 44,100
people. The government expects that, as a minimum, over 62,000 new
houses will be built in the county by 2021 and many of the county’s
residents to be will want to make use of the rail network for business
or leisure purposes.
However, Norfolk
already has a growing appetite for rail travel. Norfolk’s 31 railway
stations were used by over 7.1 million people in 2007-08, up by a
quarter on 2006-07. On average, Norfolk’s stations saw a 43 per cent
increase in usage between 2006-07 and 2007-08, greater than in
comparable counties such as Suffolk, Devon, Northumberland and
Lincolnshire.
Services to London
comprise 76.8 per cent of all journeys to or from the East of England
and four out of the five most widely used stations in the county –
Norwich, King’s Lynn, Diss and Downham Market – have direct services to
London. Indeed, in 2007-08 the usage of Diss station increased by 32
per cent, the largest growth in usage for any station on the Norwich to
London Liverpool Street line.
The world class
businesses choosing Norfolk as their base will inevitably need to use
the rail network to connect them with the capital and other parts of the
country. Passenger journeys within the East of England have more than
doubled in the last decade. A better rail service is good for Norfolk
and good for the wider economy. However, this growth cannot be
sustained without the appropriate rail services in place. Sadly, NXEA
has proved itself to be incapable of meeting this rising demand and the
Passenger Focus TOC report notes that satisfaction over the frequency of
trains has fallen consistently and markedly since Autumn 2007.
In 2008-09, National
Express East Anglia paid £98 million to the Exchequer, which represents
a cost of 2.5 pence per passenger kilometre and is the third highest
subsidy in Great Britain. Of course, NXEA is responsible for the
terms of its original bid, but the level of subsidy payments has
nonetheless made it difficult for significant investments in services to
be made beyond cosmetic changes to rolling stock and rebranding
exercises. Whilst the temptation for the Treasury may well be to
maximise return from the franchise, National Express’s rail operations
should provide a cautionary tale. The company promised huge premium
payments in order to win franchises but simply could not make good on
its undertakings and the quality of National Express services suffered.
The size of the premium offered by TOCs to the Exchequer must never be
put before the quality of the service offered to passengers and we would
ask that this be central to government thinking when the new franchise
is awarded.
A new franchise must
also mandate a higher quality of travel experience than has thus far
been the case. For example, many TOCs offer free wi-fi access and
laptop power points but NXEA has declined to offer either of these
services. Indeed, NXEA has seemed rather more interested in withdrawing
onboard services to passengers, rather than offering new ones.
We echo the six
priorities expressed by Shaping Norfolk’s Future, whose partners in a
campaign for improvements include the East of England Development
Agency, Regional Cities East, the Norfolk Rail Alliance, Norfolk County
Council and the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce:
- Faster journey times
- More carriage capacity
- Investment in track infrastructure to enable faster and more reliable
journeys
- Retention
and development of a high quality intercity service offering an
excellent travel experience on clean, comfortable, wi-fi enabled trains,
including good catering facilities
- Improved
station environment and facilities
- Longer
franchises which can further increase investment in the service
We welcome your
statement this month favouring longer franchises for the future and
trust that such a model will be considered for application to the
Norwich-London line.
Furthermore, we
strongly believe you should consider action to secure:
- Good
weekend services
- Investment in new engines
- Options
for local services out of Norwich for leisure travellers and commuters,
building partnerships to do so if appropriate
- Extension
the franchise definition to include Norwich-Peterborough (which overlaps
to Ely with Norwich-Cambridge)
- Modernisation of line and stations throughout the region and including
other key interchanges such as at Stratford and Stansted
We recognise the role
of Network Rail in achieving these ends, and acknowledge that a
considerable element of the responsibility for current poor service
rests with Network Rail’s performance in East Anglia. Reviewing the
work of Network Rail alongside the re-franchising process is central to
securing a better service and gaining effective infrastructure
investment.
To conclude, Norfolk
deserves a better railway link than it currently has. The appetite is
there for a better rail network now and it can only get stronger.
We would welcome your
assurance that the specification for the new franchise will take the
above points into account. Your colleague Chris Mole MP has already
indicated willingness to meet Norfolk MPs at the end of the
consultation. We look forward to discussing the above issues with your
team then.
