£29m penalty for worst performing rail firm

First Great Western: £29 penalty for poor performance

The country's worst performing rail company, First Great Western, has been ordered to hire new drivers, guards and engineers, pay passengers more compensation and cut fares.

The Government demands - effectively a £29million penalty on operator FirstGroup - indicate how close the Paddington-based rail group has come to being sacked from its franchise.

The network between the West Country and London has persistently been the worst in the country. It has been labelled "the misery line" and triggered direct action by angry passengers.

Today the Department for Transport lost patience with the operator and demanded an emergency remedial plan to tackle overcrowding, cancellations, late-running trains and rising fares.

The firm was also put on notice that it had been in breach of its licence to run the franchise as it had misreported cancellation statistics. Chief executive Moir Lockhead claimed cancellations in January were at their lowest level in 18 months.

Unveiling the strategy - which will be funded by FirstGroup and not the taxpayer - Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said: "The performance of First Great Western has fallen persistently short of customers' expectations and has been unacceptable to both passengers and Government." The requirements include:

Doubling compensation to passengers for late trains this year, and 50 per cent more on compensation levels next year.

Accelerating carriage refurbishment to raise the quality of interiors on commuter trains from Reading, Newbury and Oxford.

A further 500,000 of the cheapest offpeak tickets to be made available from the network's most popular stations;

Introduction of improved platform information systems.

More trains between Cardiff and Portsmouth to ease crowding at Bristol.

FirstGroup admitted its failings today but fell short of an apology.

It said: "We acknowledge that the performance of First Great Western has fallen short of its own standards and expectations of passengers.

"We are committed to improving performance at First Great Western and taking the necessary action to ensure that cancellations and delays are minimised.

"Following discussions with the DfT we have agreed to make additional investments to provide an enhanced service for passengers and agreed a plan to improve operational performance."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in