An MP has been forced to the sit on the floor on a train travelling from London and has hit out at West Coast Mainline rail services. Conservative MP Jo Gideon posted a picture of herself sitting on the floor of the Avanti West Coast train.
She said it was 'truly unacceptable' that there were no seats available for a lot of passengers. The direct services between Stoke-on-Trent and London have been cut from two to one train an hour since August, and Avanti has blamed 'severe staff shortages' and industrial action by drivers. The Stoke-on-Trent Central MP said she would be writing to bosses at Avanti to raise concerns over the current level of service on the main line, reports StokeonTrentLive.
Ms Gideon said: "After a day speaking in the House of Commons, I caught the Avanti West Coast train back from London to Stoke-on-Trent Central sat on the floor. There are people in every seat, aisle and like me sat on the floor, which is truly unacceptable.
"Stoke-on-Trent residents deserve reliable, accessible and fair priced rail services with a guaranteed seat. I will be writing to the bosses at Avanti West Coast, speaking further with my colleagues in Westminster and will continue to outline concerns with the Government until I am confident residents have the services they deserve."
Another MP, Newcastle-under-Lyme's Aaron Bell, raised similar concerns with Avanti's recent performance with the now-former transport minister Kevin Foster in the House of Commons earlier this week. Mr Bell said his constituents were having to put with a 'terrible service' from Avanti, with the one train each hour frequently 'being rammed'.
He added: "The main cause of this unreliability is due to a lack of fully trained drivers because of delays in training during the pandemic, coupled with an unofficial 'strike' by drivers refusing all overtime or additional days of work, which the company had been relying upon.
"This is plainly not good enough and the minister, Kevin Foster MP, made that clear from the despatch box. Avanti has given assurances that services should improve very significantly in December, as nearly 100 newly trained drivers have now entered the service.
"Avanti has been given a six-month extension to sort this problem out (stripping them of their franchise now would not address the underlying issue, and would probably make things worse). I will continue to hold them to account on behalf of those Newcastle-under-Lyme constituents who rely on their services."
Avanti have given the official reason as unofficial strike action' by members of Aslef, the train drivers' union, for its staff shortages. Nearly all drivers are currently refusing to work overtime on rest days.
But Aslef denies that this is strike action, and says the problems are down to Avanti not recruiting enough drivers. The company has nearly 600 drivers, according to an Avanti West Coast factsheet and almost 100 new drivers will have entered into passenger service between April and December.
The trainline says it reduced its timetable is to improve reliability, but that there will be a 'significant increase' to services in December, which will not be dependent on overtime.
An Avanti West Coast spokesperson said: "We know we’re not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and we apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience caused. Our customers and communities deserve a dependable train service, and we’re working hard to rebuild our timetable in a resilient and sustainable way, as well increase the booking horizon for weekends.
"We remain focused on providing a reliable train service for customers, and our revised timetable, with no reliance on overtime, is proving more dependable – in the last three weeks we were scheduled to run 3,412 services, of which just under six per cent were cancelled, mainly because of short-notice sickness and infrastructure issues. That compares with cancellation rates of 18 per cent and 24 per cent in the two weeks prior to our timetable change in August.
"Resolving this situation requires a robust plan that will allow us to increase services without being reliant on traincrew overtime, which has fallen dramatically in recent weeks. We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding."
