Crap testicles connect - Andrew Dismore's updates

Mr Roger Tichborne

Our Ref: Transport e-Update 8.3: Thameslink disruption report 2
Please quote reference on all correspondence

20th November 2009

Dear Mr Tichborne,

I promised to keep you informed about the current Thameslink dispute, which is disrupting services from Mill Hill and Hendon stations.

I attach a copy of the letter of 13th November, which I received from the First Capital Connect overall head, Mary Grant. Yesterday (19th November), I met with a Thameslink senior executive, Larry Heyman, at Mill Hill station, to discuss the dispute, and also to get a more general brief on Thameslink plans.

The management and ASLEF, the drivers’ union, were meeting yesterday to try to resolve the dispute.

The background, as I think people now generally know, is that FCC ‘inherited’ the drivers’ contract from the Thameslink company, who lost the franchise to run the service a few years ago.

This contract provides for a four-day, 35-hour week, with five continuous days off every three weeks. The basic driver’s pay is £38,000. Average pay, with overtime and rest day working, is £50,000, and some earn £60,000.

Up till now, the shift pattern has not been a problem, as drivers have wanted to work more overtime than is actually available.

The dispute is over pay. FCC have offered a two-year deal, for the current financial year and next year. The current year is a zero rise; next year, the offer is either 3% or RPI plus 1% (whichever is higher), plus a one-off payment of £200 in April. The drivers want a rise for the current year.

The drivers have withdrawn their voluntary overtime working, which is needed to run the railway even in peak hours. I find it bizarre and incompetent, that peak hour services are dependent on such an arrangement, even if it has been satisfactory until now.

As a consequence, FCC have issued a new timetable, which is the one they can run based on drivers’ contractual hours. I am informed that FCC’s users’ group encouraged this, to give the travelling public a degree of certainty, during the disruption. If some drivers do report for overtime, extra trains can run – yesterday there were 8 extra, beyond the reduced timetable.

This timetable provides two trains per hour at all stations. The reduction in peak hours is just less than 50% of normal service; over the day as a whole, the service is running at 62% of normal. This pattern will continue, until the drivers resume normal working.

I have stressed, in no uncertain terms, that this is an unacceptable situation, and the importance of resolving the dispute both in the short term; and in the longer term, sorting out this ridiculous shift pattern.



Station refurbishment

Though this is not uppermost in passengers’ minds at present, I was pleased to see on my visit to Mill Hill, the following improvements over the last year:

· platforms resurfaced;

· new information screens;

· new lighting;

· new shelters;

· new platform name signs;

· removal of the graffiti on the platform canopy.



Further improvements I have raised as needed, are:

· weather protection for the ‘island’ platform shelter;

· better cleaning of the steps and underpass;

· better lighting in the Bunns Lane car park;

· train information screen at the Bunns Lane car park station entrance;

· better cleaning of the bus station/car park area.



Thameslink modernisation programme

The £5.5bn Government investment programme is progressing well. Work to extend the Mill Hill platform was completed earlier this year, and the platform exterior programme elsewhere is on time, as is the major rebuild at Blackfriars. The northern part of the line modernisation will be complete by 2012, as planned.

23 of the 24 new ‘electrostar’ trains are now in service, with the last arriving by early December (these trains are used for Mill Hill and Hendon in the early morning and late evening).

Since March, longer eight car trains are used in the morning peak hours, providing morning and evening peak services with 2,400 extra seats. Since March, FCC have also been able to put in service an extra six trains, transferred from Southern.



I hope this update has been of help to you, to know what is going on. As and when I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Dismore MP
Labour Member of Parliament for Hendon