THE Office of Rail and Road is calling on Network Rail to improve its planning and procedures based on an investigation into the rail transport company’s contribution to the poor performance suffered by passengers on South Western Railway services.

Published on July 4, the review of National Rail’s performance delivery to South Western services has found that passenger satisfaction with the punctuality and reliability has dropped significantly since 2015, and that the rail franchise is now rated the third worst performing rail operator and the sixth worst for overall passenger satisfaction.

South Western Railway was awarded the south-western franchise in March 2017 and took over from South West Trains last August.

Operating both freight and passenger services on the Wessex route, mainline services run out of London Waterloo to Woking, Basingstoke, Southampton Central, Portsmouth Harbour, Bournemouth, Weymouth, Exeter, Salisbury, Reading and Alton, with suburban lines including Guildford, Dorking, Windsor, Weybridge and Shepperton, amounting to approximately 1,600 trains per day serving more than 200 stations.

Having only one London terminal means that there are certain critical corridors, for example all of its mainline service groups are significantly affected by any disruption between Woking and Waterloo.

The review did flag up specific circumstances that would have impacted on service delivery, including moving staff from London Waterloo to Basingstoke Rail Operating Centre in April last year; the change in franchisee in August 2017; changes to the infrastructure , particularly the ‘longer trains programme’ necessitating extended platforms; and the Waterloo station upgrade.

The results of the review reveal that South Western Railway trains arriving on time dropped from 90.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 84.3 per cent in 2017-18.

But 68 per cent of this delay was caused by Network Rail, which is why the Office of Rail and Road chose to review Network Rail’s delivery to South Western Railway.

The Office of Rail and Road found that despite the number of network-related incidents remaining stable, it is also taking longer to restore normal service and recover the service after a problem occurs. Of the issues within Network Rail’s control, it found that:

* Contingency plans had not been updated since 2011. These provide options for what action to take in cases of disruption;

* Processes for how to respond to incidents, such as who should be the lead, the steps they need to take etc, were not always followed. For example, after a fatal incident the relevant signalling centre was not involved in the conference call which agreed an action plan; and

* Lessons learned reviews didn’t always happen and, where they did, there was limited evidence that the lessons were put into practice.

In a statement last week, the Office of Rail and Road confirmed that Network Rail had accepted these findings and that it would be monitoring progress in developing and implementing improvement plans.

Graham Richards, director of railway planning and performance at the Office of Rail and Road, said: “Passengers using South Western Railway have faced unacceptable disruption in recent months. When things go wrong, it is essential that Network Rail works efficiently to get back to normal service as quickly as possible.

“Our investigation found that Network Rail has not updated its processes and technology to keep pace with the changes on the route. We will be looking closely to ensure it addresses our findings.

“We acknowledge that the performance issues on South Western Railway are not down to Network Rail alone, and we have therefore shared our findings with Michael Holden to inform his review.”

Sir Michael Holden is currently undertaking an independent review, commissioned in April this year by Chris Grayling, into what the Transport Secretary views as the rail franchise’s “disappointing performance”, while recognising that a significant proportion of the delays can be attributed to Network Rail.

Commenting on the results of the report, a Network Rail spokesman said: “We know train performance hasn’t been good enough, which is why we plan to invest more than £2bn over the next six years to help give our passengers more reliable journeys.

“This report found we have robust plans in place to maintain and improve our infrastructure, and incidents where it failed and affected the train service fell almost six per cent in the last financial year.

“But we recognise there is more to do and, working with South Western Railway, we are already addressing the recommendations set out by the Office of Rail and Road.”