Avanti West Coast admits: we’re not good enough but are making progress
Avanti West Coast bosses have admitted “we’re still not good enough”, a week after its contract was controversially renewed, but insisted that the failing intercity train service will be turned round by Christmas.
The train operator cut back its schedules and stopped selling advance tickets in August, blaming a lack of staff overtime – causing enormous disruption to Britain’s major rail artery linking cities between London and Glasgow.
Passengers have continued to report dirty, late and overcrowded trains.
In a grovelling apology on Friday, Avanti’s director of corporate affairs, Richard Scott, said: “We know we’re not good enough, we’re still not good enough, but we’re still making progress.
“I’m very, very sorry for the situation people are in, we are letting our customers down, we are not giving the communities that we serve the service they deserve,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Scott suggested that media scrutiny of Avanti was partly to blame, when questioned why the First Group and Trenitalia-owned operator was the worst-performing line in the country.
He said: “I don’t recognise that description. We are working through a very acute set of problems at the moment that we are facing, and we are making progress.”
A “sudden and dramatic drop off in the number of drivers volunteering to work rest days” this summer prompted Avanti’s mass cancellations, Scott told a transport select committee hearing earlier this week, adding: “I don’t why we’re so much worse, more seriously affected” than other companies.
He told MPs, and the BBC 0n Friday, that Avanti would get back to a “robust, sustainable timetable” that was not dependent on overtime, and would be running a near-normal pre-Covid timetable from mid-December,
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