South Western Railway performance nosedives after nationalisation
Performance at South Western Railway has plummeted in the months since it became the first network to be brought under state ownership, piling fresh scrutiny on the government’s nationalisation drive just days after it announced the lines that will be taken public next.
Delays and cancellations both rose sharply over the three months after it was nationalised in May, City PM can reveal, with issues getting more acute over time suggesting performance is on a downward trend.
Compared with the start of this year, cancellations on South Western Railway are up by an average of 50 per cent in the three months after the Department for Transport (DfT) made it state owned.
And despite the network operating a reduced service over much of the summer, delayed minutes per 100 miles rose by as much as 29 per cent between June and August. The number of services arriving between 30 minutes and an hour late has more than doubled.
“This is a very worrying and early portent of Labour’s plans to nationalise train services,” said Tony Lodge, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. “Passengers are clearly already suffering as civil servants take charge. Performance and efficiency is falling away just months before rail fares rise again.”
South Western Railway the first of many nationalisations
The findings, obtained via a Freedom of Information request, are the first indication of the competence with which ministers are overseeing their flagship railway nationalisation programme, just days after it revealed the next batch of lines poised for public ownership.
As part of its manifesto, Labour promised to establish Great British Railways in a bid to improve a fractured and creaking railway system that has faced years of stinging criticism over its poor service and expensive tickets. The party claimed the new taxpayer-funded body, which was launched shortly after Labour took office in December last year, would “reduce delays, improve reliability and reduce cost” on the railway network.
South Western Railway became the first operator to lose its licence as part of a phased approach, in a move hailed by transport secretary Heidi Alexander as a “watershed moment” in the government’s bid to “return the railways to the services of passengers”.
And last week, the DfT confirmed its plans to transfer Greater Anglia and West Midlands Trains to public ownership in October and next February respectively, before Thameslink is nationalised in May next year.
Ministers also said services operated by Chiltern Railways and Great Western Railway will follow at a later date next year.
A spokesman on behalf of Network Rail and South Western Railway said: “While our performance over the last few months has not met what we or our customers rightly expected, it is not linked in any way to our transfer to public ownership.”
A DfT spokeswoman said: “South Western Railway continues to face long-standing issues inherited from previous private sector ownership, and it will take time to root these out – but that is exactly why we are bringing all operators back under public control and what we want to do through Great British Railways.
“SWR’s move into public ownership has facilitated closer working between SWR and Network Rail, bringing track and train together to enable more passenger-focussed planning and decision making.”