Completely unacceptable – Burnham blasts Northern Rail execs at transport meeting

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has grilled executives from Northern Rail and told them the service needs to improve.

In his capacity as chair of Transport for the North Burnham laid into Northern Rail bosses telling them their improvement plan wasn’t good enough: “We cannot wait until 2027. That cannot happen. We do not understand why the answers are so vague regarding improvement and we need a better working relationship to bring that target down because 2027 is completely unacceptable.”

During another week of train cancellations and delays, Burnham and other members of Transport for the North (TfN) raised the issue including cancellations, do not travel notices and ticketing problems.

As Northern admitted that it was still cancelling between 70-100 trains per day, Burnham said that “very little has improved” with the now publicly-owned train operator since Northern was served with a breach notice by the Department for Transport in July.

As reported in specialist magazine Rail, Northern confirmed to the meeting that it has a deal with the DfT and the RMT union concerning Sunday working for conductors, which Northern believes could fix its poor performance.

Tricia Williams, Northern’s managing director told the committee, “Whilst we’re not putting all our eggs in one basket, we’re hopeful that this new agreement, if accepted, will really help improve performance and the cancellations – especially at the weekends.

“It will give us greater flexibility and better options.”

Both Williams and Northern’s chief operating officer Matt Rice bore the brunt of Burnham’s broadside, claiming Northern is aiming to get cancellations down to 2% and under 5% on Sundays as well as ensuring punctuality was above 90% by 2027. 

This target though was deemed unacceptable by the committee.

Rice said he was addressing ticket acceptance arrangements with other operators, adding, “we have day-to-day arrangements in place with Avanti and CrossCountry that is assessed when needed and longer-term agreements with LNER and TransPennine Express.

“Progress is being made with others and we’re hoping that an arrangement will be in place soon.”

Burnham demanded clarity on which operators were not cooperating on ticketing. “A passenger should be able to travel on any train on that day of travel if a Northern train is cancelled. That should be the bare minimum,” he said.

The committee recommended another meeting in January with Northern and has requested milestones to be put in place to monitor performance.