Avanti West Coast wins long-term contract despite history of delays

Avanti, one of Britain’s least reliable train operators, has been awarded a long-term contract to keep running intercity services on the West Coast main line.

The transport secretary, Mark Harper, declared Avanti “back on track” – although the regulator’s last full performance report showed it was the least punctual operator, with fewer than half of services running on time from April to June.

The RMT union described the contract award as “a travesty” and Avanti as “an unmitigated disaster”.

The firm, a joint-venture between First Group and TrenItalia, had previously been given two six-month extensions to its contract with a warning to improve. Avanti became a byword for failure in 2022, abandoning its normal timetable and scheduling only a fraction of the trains on the line linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.

However, the Department for Transport on Tuesday pointed to “dramatically reduced cancellations” and 90% of trains running less than 15 minutes late, with more than 100 additional drivers trained, addressing the staff shortages that contributed to Avanti’s problems.

The number of services have increased from 180 trains a day to 264 on weekdays, and the DfT said cancellations fell to 1.1% in July.

Avanti will run the line for up to nine years, with the contract potentially terminated after three.

The deal is a renewed management contract, according to FirstGroup, where the DfT “retains all revenue risk and substantially all cost risk”.

The joint-venture, officially called the West Coast Partnership – originally expected to help bring HS2 trains into service – will earn a fixed annual management fee of £5.1m and up to £15.8m a year in performance payments.

Another long-distance operator, Arriva’s CrossCountry, has been given an eight-year contract, with a minimum of four years. It was the second least punctual after Avanti from April-June this year, according to the ORR, with the worst cancellation score of any DfT contracted operator in England.

Harper said: “The routes Avanti West Coast operate provide vital connections, and passengers must feel confident that they can rely on the services to get them where they need to be at the right time.

“Over the past year, short-term contracts were necessary to rebuild the timetable and reduce cancellations. Now Avanti are back on track, providing long-term certainty for both the operator and passengers will best ensure that improvements continue.”

The RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, said: “Avanti are one of the worst rail companies on the network and it is a travesty that they have been awarded this contract.

“From supplying inappropriate uniforms to staff, mass cancellation of train services and multiple industrial disputes, Avanti have been an unmitigated disaster. They are incapable of running an efficient rail service or treating the staff properly.

“CrossCountry are little better, often failing to employ enough staff to run services properly and being more concerned with profit margins than delivering for passengers.

“By granting companies like Avanti and CrossCountry with lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts, the government is rewarding abject failure and exposing how corrupt the current system is.”

The FirstGroup chief executive, Graham Sutherland, said: “Our West Coast Partnership team has worked hard over recent months to deliver improvements for Avanti passengers, including an increase in the number of services in the timetable and high levels of reliability for customers.”