Service on Southeastern trains is woeful - I want to see much tougher performance standards to keep it up to scratch.
I wrote to the Department of Transport to ask if the train operator was breaking its performance targets with endless delays and cancellations.
I’m disappointed and somewhat surprised to learn that Southeastern is not breaching its franchise agreement. You can read a letter from Rail Minister Claire Perry by clicking on the attachment below.
It’s particularly baffling that Southeastern is apparently meeting customer satisfaction targets, as I hear so many complaints about Southeastern from constituents and it repeatedly comes towards the bottom of national surveys. When the franchise comes up for renewal in 2018 I want to see much more robust performance standards, and I’ll be pressing the Government on this.
For example, at the moment shorter-distance, commuter services are counted as ‘on time’ if they reach the end of their journey within five minutes of the scheduled time and within 10 minutes for longer distance trains. I don’t think that is good enough, a service should really be on-time to count as ‘on time’!
There is some good news though. More carriages are going to be added on some services in the next few weeks, which should help with over-crowding.”
