Great Western Coffee Shop

South Western Railway and Network Rail recognise that we haven’t delivered the standard of service expected or that we want to deliver. A number of challenges have contributed to this and we took action earlier this year to commission an independent review of performance on the network.

Following the completion of that review, chaired by Sir Michael Holden, we now have a blueprint to help us improve performance – and the good news is that many of the recommendations in the report had already been identified and are underway. Network Rail is also investing a record £2 billion1 over the next five years to run the railway and help give passengers more reliable journeys.

The independent report commissioned by South Western Railway and independently chaired by experienced railwayman Sir Michael Holden, looked at every aspect of performance on the South Western Network to establish why it has been in decline since 2011.

The report concludes that a number of factors have caused a loss of timetable resilience and a degradation in service recovery capability during and after disruption over a number of years. It lists growing passenger numbers,  the management of train crew , the operation of longer trains, increasing numbers of speed restrictions, , and ageing infrastructure as having contributed to the decline over the last eight years. More recently the Waterloo works in August 2017 and the move of the joint Control between Network Rail and the train operator to Basingstoke in early 2017, have exacerbated the situation.

As well as identifying the causes of decline the report makes a number of recommendations to address these issues. In some cases these areas had already been identified and remedial action has been underway for some time.