Covid’s impact on Hull Trains has been laid bare in results just published.
£30 million in revenue was wiped off the FirstGroup company, as ticket sales fell from £32.4 million to £2.4 million in the year to March 31.
It led to a £10.1 million operating loss for the direct-to-London open access operator, having brought a £2.7 million profit through Hull’s Paragon Station in the previous 12 months.
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Bosses acted on what amounted to a 92.4 per cent loss of passenger revenue, with three periods of ‘hibernation’ aligned with the government-enforced public lockdowns and reduced services between.
A total of 26 redundancies were also made, with many of the remaining 115 staff furloughed as the financial year began as the UK battened down the hatches in March 2020.
And the company has revealed that in the first six months of the current year, to March 31, it returned to “circa 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with further recovery achieved during Autumn 2021”.
Managing director David Gibson, who joined in October last year, said the company is focused on returning to profitability in the coming financial year, which starts next week.
It faces up to a new world of work, with many office workers now adopting a hybrid week, and video meetings a new normal.
“As an open access operator Hull Trains can respond to passenger demand quickly and easily by reinstating services or couple units to strengthen existing services,” he said in the accompanying strategic report. “Leisure demand Friday to Sunday has returned much stronger than business demand and in December 2021 the company strengthened certain Friday / Saturday services to 10 cars and launched a sixth return Sunday path increasing its weekly services to 94, the highest in its history.”
The emergence of the Omicron variant saw 20 services dropped in January, but it returned to 94 in February.
“Hull Trains remains optimistic that its direct services from East Yorkshire to London will play an important part in the region’s economic recovery in the coming years,” Mr Gibson continued.
Auditors are satisfied it is a going concern, having sought assurances from directors.Banking facilities and support from FirstGroup, twinned with modelling forecasts and projections show it can operate within its limits.
Prior to the pandemic, Hull Trains had welcomed four of the five new Paragon class Hitachi models, with a fifth unit arriving in the June of 2020. It added 5,000 seats a week while making the company the only operator to guarantee every journey on a new “world-class train”.
Mr Gibson added: “Government and societal responses to the pandemic have had a significant impact on all of our markets and will continue to do so for some time to come. Travel volumes have reduced very substantially and while guidance to limit travel and socially distance remains in place, this will have a significant impact on our service capacity and financial performance.
"The company is dependent on the support of its ultimate parent company, FirstGroup Plc. It is difficult to assess what effect the continued impact of the coronavirus pandemic might have on the wider economy and the areas in which we operate.
“Whilst the company has made use of the HMRC furlough scheme and taken the difficult decision of making 26 redundancies it is still unclear what impact there might be on business or leisure travel and therefore the company’s future trading performance and financial position This impact is mitigated by the support of FirstGroup Plc.”
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