Northern Trains say they are addressing cancellation issues

Operators have had some difficulties since the pandemic

Northern Trains say they are addressing cancellation issues
Author: Andy MarshPublished 7th Mar 2023

The managing director of Northern says they have plans are in place to combat issues surrounding train cancellations across places like East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.

Cancellations have been a problem for all operators since the pandemic with sickness and a backlog in training leading to a driver shortage.

Yesterday we revealed Transpennine Express will cancel more than 23 thousand trains this year if their reliability remains the same.

Office of Rail and Road data shows the operator cancelled over 17 hundred services during the four-weeks to February 4th.

Transpennine says they're working hard to address recruitment and driver shortages.

Strikes and the pandemic have caused a backlog in problems for the entire rail network - including for rail users in places like Hull, Brough, Goole and Scunthorpe and Grimsby.

We've spoken to Northern Trains about the situation there.

Managing director Nick Donovan told us: "We need to get better but we've done reasonably well in terms of our performance recently."

"The most recent results published by the regulator puts us on a par with the average England and Wales figures in terms of cancellations."

"The most important thing we've been doing is making sure we have the right number of drivers trained up through our academy and so on."

"We have the biggest driver intake of any of the operators - around 150 drivers in training at any one time."

"Many of those are going through an apprenticeship scheme."

"I'm really pleased we've recovered from all the training backlog we had during the covid period."

"The challenge we have is around sickness and absence which we're making great inroads and behind that is making sure our ways of working are flexible so weekend serves can be covered."

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