The rail regulator says it has 'gained assurances' from Avanti West Coast that the train operator will return to providing timetables at least six weeks in advance of travel.
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) said the news would 'provide some comfort' for passengers they said had faced uncertainty in the past few months due to 'very short-term confirmation of timetables'. In some cases, said the regulator of Britain's railways, passengers endured just 48 hours notice ahead of weekend travel.
It was confirmed by the Department of Transport today that under-fire Avanti West Coast, ahead of the scheduled end of its franchise on October 16, has been given another six months to run the west coast main line rail service, with a warning that it must increase the frequency of its services.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester who has led calls for Avanti to be stripped of its contract over scaled-down timetables between Manchester and London, called in the wake of the contract extension for 'day-to-day monitoring and week-to-week public reporting on performance' to be introduced.
Reacting to the news, he said: "Putting Avanti West Coast on notice marks a significant shift in tone under the new Secretary of State. At last, there is a clear recognition of the crisis engulfing the country’s most important railway line and the management failure that has led to that.
"However, the lack of an acceptable rescue plan from the company - and clear conditions from the Government - means very few people in Greater Manchester will support this extension.
"The damage that Avanti’s failing service is inflicting on our economy, and the huge disruption to passengers, is completely unacceptable. The company has shown itself to be unable to stabilise their service and fix problems with ticketing and the on-board experience for passengers. The thought of another six months of what we're currently experiencing is a huge concern."
The ORR said it challenged Avanti in August to provide a recovery plan for returning to providing timetable information to passengers in line with industry norms - between six to eight weeks ahead of travel - but the plan put forward by the company was rejected.
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In a statement, the regulator said: "A revised plan has since been submitted and shows a substantially improving picture for weekday timetable information, a more gradual improvement for weekends, and positive plans for the Christmas period.
"The key enabler for delivering the improvements is additional resources brought into both the Avanti and Network Rail timetable planning teams, with Avanti drawing on consultancy support while the situation stabilises."
Stephanie Tobyn, Director of Strategy, Policy and Reform at the ORR, said: "We challenged Avanti under their licence condition with ORR that requires the provision of appropriate, accurate and timely information to passengers to plan and make their journeys.
"We believe their resulting plan is credible and appropriately ambitious given the interactions with planned engineering work and with the biannual industry-wide major timetable change in December. We will continue to review Avanti's progress on a weekly basis and work closely with Transport Focus who are monitoring the passenger experience of the reduced timetable."
Avanti announced in August it was cutting the number of trains between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly from one every 20 minutes to one an hour 'until further notice', saying it had acted in the wake of industrial action 'to ensure a reliable service is delivered so customers can travel with greater certainty'.
The timetable change, however, sparked fierce criticism from the travelling public.
Avanti has used a degree of rest-day working to operate its timetable. Drivers have traditionally volunteered to work additional shifts over and above their contracted hours in what ministers called an 'industry arrangement' that 'has been in place for many years, to the benefit of the drivers, the operators and indeed the passengers'.
But services were reduced in early August as result of drivers being unwilling to sign up for the overtime upon which all train operators rely. That caused numerous 'short-notice cancellations' and led to the reduction in trains, said Avanti. The company has also blamed Covid for a backlog of training and industrial action.
Avanti said it would use the national timetable changes in December to relaunch a 'stable and deliverable' three trains an hour service that wasn't reliant on rest day working or overtime, saying it now had more drivers 'in the business than ever before'.
In late September, Avanti began to run an additional 10 daily trains between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, and an extra six on Wednesdays.
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