Why is the UK’s west coast mainline railway in chaos?

A “meltdown” of cancellations, delays and overcrowding on the west coast mainline, one of the UK’s busiest rail routes, is damaging the economy and risking economic growth, regional leaders and business groups have warned.

Avanti, the operator, slashed its timetable two months ago due to “severe” staffing shortages, leaving passengers unable to book seats in advance or reliably travel between the cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Despite the disruption, ministers on Friday confirmed that the company would have its contract temporarily extended for six months. They also put Avanti on notice, warning it must “drastically improve” as it rolls out a recovery plan.

The problems come as the industry has rebuilt service levels following the coronavirus crisis, but faces government pressure to cut costs after being bailed out with £16bn of taxpayer money during the pandemic.

At the heart of the crisis lies a sudden breakdown of relations between Avanti’s management and drivers. While several other operators have faced disruption because of staff shortages this year, Avanti alone has suffered a near breakdown of services and is the clearest example of how Britain’s railways are struggling to provide a viable service amid fraught relations with unions.

Businesses and local leaders are running out of patience with the disruption. Clare Haywood, chair of the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership of business leaders, described “not knowing whether trains are going to arrive, standing in London Euston (station) and watching your train being cancelled”.

“So you miss your presentation, you miss your meeting, you look unprofessional, you miss negotiations. Just in terms of day to day productivity the impact is immense,” she said.

Rob Downes, Greater Manchester development manager at the Federation of Small Businesses, said the “significant limitation” on ticket sales signalled northern England was “closed for business”.

“Anecdotal feedback from members as far afield as the Lake District already indicates a dip in tourism, which is likely linked,” he said. “The north west tourist industry — like most other sectors — needs this sorting yesterday.”

Avanti’s announcement on August 8 that it was nearly halving services out of London came after a critical mass of drivers refused to work overtime. Running a full timetable had relied on drivers working on rest days, common practice in parts of the industry, but over the summer staff withdrew their support overnight.

Christian Wolmar, a rail analyst, said Avanti’s “aggressive” management meant it “lost all co-operation” from drivers.

The company said drivers had previously reliably worked overtime to run 400 services per week. It added that it is training 100 new drivers.

However, union officials said LNER, which operates the east coast mainline and has managed to have a normal timetable since February, has long had better industrial relations than Avanti. They described LNER’s management as not “anything like as adversarial or confrontational”.

LNER also agreed a deal to keep training drivers throughout the pandemic, which provided it with a buffer of staff as post lockdown services resumed. By contrast, Avanti stopped nearly all training during the pandemic, citing social distancing rules.

But under normal circumstances, the company should still have had enough drivers to operate its schedules, and many within the industry are struggling to explain why it is facing worse problems than other operators.

Some industry bosses privately believe that Avanti was the easiest franchise for unions to target to cause sweeping disruption on economic arteries; LNER reverted to state ownership in 2018. Unions deny the charge.

But beyond its timetable and labour relations difficulties, Avanti also had the worst passenger satisfaction scores in the most recent quarterly figures — a performance described as “terrible” by Baroness Charlotte Vere, transport minister, in July. Passengers pointed to dirty rail carriages, broken card machines and air conditioning failures.

“It comes down to the quality of the management,” said Roger Ford, industry editor of industry journal Modern Railways.

He said Avanti’s management appeared to “lose focus” when the contract switched over from Virgin Trains in 2019, a problem exacerbated by the arrival of the pandemic. Phil Whittingham, Avanti’s managing director, resigned last month.

Meanwhile, passengers and businesses continue to suffer poor service. Even after the timetable was reduced to improve reliability, an average 10 per cent of services between London and Manchester have been cancelled during the past three weeks, while more than one in four were delayed.

In Stoke-on-Trent, a city that has seen £56mn in government investment designed to “level up” its post-industrial economy, Conservative council leader Abi Brown said there was “huge disappointment” at “the massive potential in our city being overlooked through poor rail services”.

She said Avanti had done “almost nothing” to improve its service since taking on the franchise in 2019. “The damage the inconsistency of service must be doing to the local economy is concerning,” she added.

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “Every day the current arrangements on Avanti are left in place is a day when they’re damaging the economy and that multiplies over time, because it becomes a reputational issue.”

Avanti has outlined a plan to restore services by December, and has already replaced some intercity services. It said its latest cancellation figures were “less than half the rate” in July, because the revised timetable made services “more reliable”.

“Nevertheless, we know that at the moment we’re not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and we apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience this is causing. We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding,” the company added.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, transport secretary, said: “We have agreed a six-month extension to Avanti to assess whether it is capable of running this crucial route to a standard passengers deserve and expect.”