'Nobody took charge' of May's rail chaos on Merseyside

A damning report says "nobody took charge" of the timetable chaos in May which caused misery for train passengers on Merseyside

An investigation by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) regulator into the May timetable change concluded Network Rail, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), Northern, the Department for Transport and the ORR itself all made mistakes.

The inquiry's interim report warned of a "lack of clarity about roles and responsibilities''.

It added: "The present industry arrangements do not support clarity of decision making: it was unclear who was responsible for what."

"Nobody took charge.''

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has previously insisted: "I don't run the railways."

The May 20 timetable change was intended to deliver huge benefits to passengers as a result of major upgrades to the network, but instead saw services crippled in the north and south-east of England.

GTR and Northern cancelled up to 470 and 310 scheduled trains respectively each weekday during the disruption, which lasted several weeks.

The regulator's 183-page report catalogued failures by various organisations which led to this outcome.

They included:

• Delays with Network Rail's electrification work in the North;

• Network Rail's unit responsible for producing timetables did not have a sufficient method of working to manage the scale of changes required;

• GTR and Northern were not properly aware or prepared'' for the problems with the new timetables and did not do enough to provide accurate information to passengers when disruption occurred;

• The DfT and ORR failed to sufficiently examine the assurances they received from the industry about the risk of disruption.

Events and decisions taken before January meant it was "probably unavoidable'' that the launch would fail, according to the report. If there was a final go/no-go decision point it was in autumn 2017