So who are these 'faceless' decision makers at the DfT and why are they not held accountable to the public?

[70014IronDuke]

Taken from this thread on Overcrowding on East Midlands Railway (which for some reason I cannot find now!)

EDIT - it's here https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/east-midlands-railway-overcrowding-issues.245838/

Bearing in mind what was said when the 810s were first ordered; that they would "Almost always run in pairs". was the quantity of 33 sets thought to be sufficient to cover that claim?

If they had been ordered as, let's say, 7-car sets with 2 Firsts and 5 Standards to each set, they wouldn't run in pairs and surely the number of sets ordered could have been reduced?

It's a pity the clowns at the DfT are stuck in their ways of ordering trains of insufficient capacity and then issuing empty promises about doubling up regularly wherever needed.

I seem to regularly read on these forums that the DfT people (or "clowns" * in the above post) repeatedly make this "mistake" about ordering new stock which prove to have insufficient capacity for the services they take over.

This raises several questions, viz:

Is this because the people responsible believe they cannot get financial approval for more stock, or because they actually make models for the services' futures which prove to be inadequate. In which case, doesn't someone think about changing the modeling system?

But more importantly, the whole thing seems opaque. I never seem to read that, eg, Alistair Crumble-Sykes, Director of Rolling Stock Future Allocation at the DfT, who signed off the plan for the new XYZ class service on the MML, has admitted that in practice it was a mistake to order 5-car trains because the service needed 7-car trains.

And my question is: why not? Who ultimately makes these decisions, and why are they not named (and shamed) when necessary? Can the media not get to such facts? We have detailed enquiries into eg one drunk passenger falls against a train late at night (and sometimes subsequent admonition of normal rail staff involved) but seem to have no enquiries whatsoever when well-paid folk in suits cause untold misery and frustration for years later because they order insufficient stock for a line's passenger demands.

Or have I just missed reading accounts of such enquiries?

* re "clowns" - I don't know any professional clowns personally, but feel this is an insulting use of the term. I suspect professional clowns do an awful lot of training, and resent their calling being so degraded in regular speech.

ps posted in the UK Railways Discussion forum because I think it pertains to general management of the railways. If Mods feel this should be in Traction & Rolling Stock, go ahead and re-allocate it.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Taken from this thread on Overcrowding on East Midlands Railway (which for some reason I cannot find now!)

there's the link by the way in case you want to add it

East Midlands Railway overcrowding issues

East Midlands Railway services have really been suffering on both their Intercity and Regional services over the past 24 hours, due to the planned closure of the WCML, causing a significant amount of extra passengers onto their services. Caverswall signal box was down for most of the afternoon...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Who they are is detailed here: https://assets.publishing.service.g...data/file/1133721/DfT_org_chart_Dec_22_v3.pdf

They're accountable to DfT ministers and hence, ultimately, the governments you elect.

 

[Magdalia]

The Department for Transport is responsible for government policy on the railways. Anything that involves spending government money will also involve HM Treasury.

Department for Transport Ministers are accountable to parliament. Backbench MPs can ask oral questions in the House, about once per month when parliament is sitting, and can ask written questions at any time when parliament is sitting.

There is also a departmental select committee. Civil Servants can be required to answer questions from select committees, not just ministers. Departmental select committees can also call expert witnesses.

Oral parliamentary questions and select committee hearings sometimes get featured on this forum. If there's nothing more important happening in parliament, then they will be on the BBC Parliament Channel, where you can see the faces of the decision makers.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Who they are is detailed here: https://assets.publishing.service.g...data/file/1133721/DfT_org_chart_Dec_22_v3.pdf

They're accountable to DfT ministers and hence, ultimately, the governments you elect.

Thks. That's interesting. So, presumably, one of these sector heads (perhaps Dan Moore of Rail Strategy and Rail Analysis?) advises those above on what his section thinks, say, the MML needs regarding rolling stock for future services? Probably at least two or three scenarios for the big cheeses to decide on the most effective on cost-returns basis.

And ultimately the minister has to, or should, take the blame (or credit) for the ensuing mess (or super service) some years later - when almost certainly the minister will be out of the job.

But really, this process of modelling scenarios is what needs to be transparent. If the civil servants at this stage making the recommendations are brilliant/incompetent, this is what matters, and they should be rewarded or otherwise based on the usefulness of their model scenarios.

Of course, I'm only guessing what actually goes on. Happy to have light shone on whatever the process(es) are or aren't from those in the know.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The class 810s were ordered in 2019 by EMR (Abellio, then an arm of the Dutch government), via Rock Rail as the Rosco/financiers.
The order would have been developed by EMR/Rock in consultation with the DfT, who authorise all new train procurements.
There would also have been franchise commitments as part of Abellio's winning bid, and DfT had previously said that the route would get new bi-modes as a sop to the suspension of the electrification plan by Chris Grayling.
Covid then changed the shape of the industry, with franchise rules and commitments being ditched.
Since then, various stages of management contract have been applied, all of them under direct DfT control.

DfT civil servants (often railway professionals on secondment) are not "fools" or "DafT", they are there to deliver government policy.
EMR will have put up a business case to order the class 810 fleet, and this was authorised at the time by DfT.
So EMR has to operate the intended fleet and also meet the cost targets that the DfT has set.
Changes to the service specification may occur, but cost will be a major factor.
No new trains have been ordered since the onset of Covid, excepting HS2 stock which is still not properly specified/contracted.

 

[Watershed]

The class 810s were ordered in 2019 by EMR (Abellio, then an arm of the Dutch government), via Rock Rail as the Rosco/financiers.
The order would have been developed by EMR/Rock in consultation with the DfT, who authorise all new train procurements.
There would also have been franchise commitments as part of Abellio's winning bid, and DfT had previously said that the route would get new bi-modes as a sop to the suspension of the electrification plan by Chris Grayling.
Covid then changed the shape of the industry, with franchise rules and commitments being ditched.
Since then, various stages of management contract have been applied, all of them under direct DfT control.

DfT civil servants (often railway professionals on secondment) are not "fools" or "DafT", they are there to deliver government policy.
EMR will have put up a business case to order the class 810 fleet, and this was authorised at the time by DfT.
So EMR has to operate the intended fleet and also meet the cost targets that the DfT has set.
Changes to the service specification may occur, but cost will be a major factor.
No new trains have been ordered since the onset of Covid, excepting HS2 stock which is still not properly specified/contracted.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that Abellio would have undertaken planning before making their bid, as part of which they would have determined how many units they would need to deliver the timetable and capacity that the DfT was asking for, and/or that they were bidding to run.

Of course it's possible that the aforesaid planning suggested a higher number of required units than what ended up being ordered. Many rolling stock orders have been cut back over the years, so that wouldn't have been an unheard of occurrence. Such cutbacks have mostly come from the DfT.

Equally, it's possible that the number was simply cut back by the finance part of Abellio's bid team, as they felt that they couldn't win the bid with that number of units (they would naturally take into account the anticipated cost of leasing the relevant number of units in their calculations).

In short, it would have been either the DfT or Abellio, or possibly both, that decided on such a stingy order.

 

[cb a1]

As well as ministers moving on, so do civil servants. In the years between a decision being made and the resulting outcome of that decision being known, there may well be nobody still doing the same job.

This is where the HM Treasury 'Magenta Book' should kick in. Decisions result from processes and the decision on say rolling stock will be based on trying to fulfil dozens of policies, within many constraints, with limited data and a very large dose of uncertainty about the future. Hindsight is easy, foresight is really difficult. If someone does manage to predict the future, it's more likely to be luck than skill.

 

[dosxuk]

The MML stock debacle is a remnant of the collapse of the franchising system as we knew it. The bidders for the franchise were required to submit a rolling stock plan which would enable them to use the electrification being installed between Kettering and London, to meet the Government's announcement that bimode trains would enable electrification without the costs of actually electrifying the route.

As you may remember, this franchise was let to Abellio, after the other two bidders were excluded from the competition because they didn't feel they could commercially take on the risk of the railway pensions, and opted not to commit to those requirements. While we don't know exactly what their rolling stock plans were, we do know that Abellio were the only operator who committed a whole replacement fleet for the entire franchise, as well as the only operator to commit to the open-ended pensions finance issues.

After winning the franchise by default, the operation to remove the HST fleet from service was rapidly put into action, which very quickly resulted in a realisation that there wasn't going to be enough stock to operate the existing service - hence the 180's were drafted in, much to the amusement and astonishment of industry insiders and enthusiasts, who seemed to be more aware of the 180's issues than the Abellio plan makers. Shortly after, there was an acknowledgement that they had not ordered enough 810's to operate their planned services and meet the capacity demands - so the 180's would need to stay long term.

Then Covid hit - and it must have been a relief to Abellio's planners as the capacity issues disappeared. By the time they started showing up again, they were operating on a management contract and all the decisions about stock were now in the hands of the DfT, and they weren't willing to spend any money to fix the problem that was coming. EMR now just need to operate the stock they have, on the services they have agreed, and any issues with that not being sufficient are out of their hands and control. Meanwhile the DfT can simply say that EMR intended to run the services with the planned 810 fleet - and they will have the documented plans to prove that - and since passenger loads have dropped since Covid, they see no need to increase the amount of stock allocated to the franchise. Their only real interest in rolling stock plans is that it sounds realistic and the pricing is in their ballpark - things that Abellio had to demonstrate as part of their bid - the DfT are now just saying "you made the plans, you stick to them".

So basically we now have two parties, who can demonstrate that it was the other party's fault that there isn't sufficient stock, and that the decisions are out of their control. We are going to be hamstrung for decades by an over-optimistic franchise bid that won by default, with a rolling stock plan that made zero sense on day one. While a number of enthusiasts are happy to say it will all be fine once the 810's arrive as they have more seats than a 5 car 222, and that busy services will be doubled up, they are all missing the fact that 5 car services were the short ones in the past. 7 / 9 / 10 car services provided the backbone of the MML service until the removal of the HSTs from the route. 4/5 car only services were concentrated on the Corby and Sheffield slow services. 165 cars of 810 stock are replacing 237 cars of HST/222 stock - it should be obvious to anybody that there is going to be a reduction in capacity, regardless of the extra metre of carriage length of the 810's and a better internal layout than the 222's.

It's also worth remembering that Abellio's rolling stock plan included using stock (171's) that there was no plan to release from their existing operations, it's not just the intercity routes that were subject to the enthusiasm of their bid planners.

 

[fgwrich]

Well, we know that one of them is the Voldemort to the unions, Mr Peter “I’m going to break the unions” Wilkinson.

 

[Master29]

Taken from this thread on Overcrowding on East Midlands Railway (which for some reason I cannot find now!)

EDIT - it's here https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/east-midlands-railway-overcrowding-issues.245838/



I seem to regularly read on these forums that the DfT people (or "clowns" * in the above post) repeatedly make this "mistake" about ordering new stock which prove to have insufficient capacity for the services they take over.

This raises several questions, viz:

Is this because the people responsible believe they cannot get financial approval for more stock, or because they actually make models for the services' futures which prove to be inadequate. In which case, doesn't someone think about changing the modeling system?

But more importantly, the whole thing seems opaque. I never seem to read that, eg, Alistair Crumble-Sykes, Director of Rolling Stock Future Allocation at the DfT, who signed off the plan for the new XYZ class service on the MML, has admitted that in practice it was a mistake to order 5-car trains because the service needed 7-car trains.

And my question is: why not? Who ultimately makes these decisions, and why are they not named (and shamed) when necessary? Can the media not get to such facts? We have detailed enquiries into eg one drunk passenger falls against a train late at night (and sometimes subsequent admonition of normal rail staff involved) but seem to have no enquiries whatsoever when well-paid folk in suits cause untold misery and frustration for years later because they order insufficient stock for a line's passenger demands.

Or have I just missed reading accounts of such enquiries?

* re "clowns" - I don't know any professional clowns personally, but feel this is an insulting use of the term. I suspect professional clowns do an awful lot of training, and resent their calling being so degraded in regular speech.

ps posted in the UK Railways Discussion forum because I think it pertains to general management of the railways. If Mods feel this should be in Traction & Rolling Stock, go ahead and re-allocate it.

This is Britain, where anyone in authority screws up you get a promotion not condemnation. It's called the old school tie and has been running this country, some may well say into the ground for years. Daft is quite an appropriate adjective in my opinion.

 

[Class 170101]

Oral parliamentary questions and select committee hearings sometimes get featured on this forum. If there's nothing more important happening in parliament, then they will be on the BBC Parliament Channel, where you can see the faces of the decision makers.

Or try Parliament Live here

Parliamentlive.tv - Commons

www.parliamentlive.tv

and search for Transport Select Committee, they are more likely than not to show the committee live because the BBC will only show one feed or be showing the House of Common Chamber live if its in session.

 

[Efini92]

Well, we know that one of them is the Voldemort to the unions, Mr Peter “I’m going to break the unions” Wilkinson.

He’s been very quiet for a while. But I’ll never forget his comments over the southern dispute.

 

[Clarence Yard]

You don’t have to worry about him - it’s his boss, Conrad Bailey, that you need to be careful with. Pete Wilkinson actually wants to run trains, but at a cheaper cost. I’m not sure Conrad wants to either run trains or keep the current size of the network.

 

[Efini92]

You don’t have to worry about him - it’s his boss, Conrad Bailey, that you need to be careful with. Pete Wilkinson actually wants to run trains, but at a cheaper cost. I’m not sure Conrad wants to either run trains or keep the current size of the network.

Do you think the first group influence in the RDG is also hampering things?

 

[VauxhallNova]

Do you think the first group influence in the RDG is also hampering things?

They certainly seem to have done well out of the DfT ever since Steve M started leading on cost saving measures.

 

[fgwrich]

They certainly seem to have done well out of the DfT ever since Steve M started leading on cost saving measures.

Well, not quite. Don’t forget GWR still has to lose its HSTs within the next year, though I’m hearing suggestions that looks to be slipping to May 2024 (hardly surprising given the pressures on both IET and Turbo fleets).

 

[RailWonderer]

So basically we now have two parties, who can demonstrate that it was the other party's fault that there isn't sufficient stock, and that the decisions are out of their control. We are going to be hamstrung for decades by an over-optimistic franchise bid that won by default, with a rolling stock plan that made zero sense on day one. While a number of enthusiasts are happy to say it will all be fine once the 810's arrive as they have more seats than a 5 car 222, and that busy services will be doubled up, they are all missing the fact that 5 car services were the short ones in the past. 7 / 9 / 10 car services provided the backbone of the MML service until the removal of the HSTs from the route. 4/5 car only services were concentrated on the Corby and Sheffield slow services. 165 cars of 810 stock are replacing 237 cars of HST/222 stock - it should be obvious to anybody that there is going to be a reduction in capacity, regardless of the extra metre of carriage length of the 810's and a better internal layout than the 222's.

I think the 222s will more likely be kept to work doubled up alongside the 810s than the 180s which are corroding. The 810s will provide far better capacity than what is offered now so things will improve.

 

[tbtc]

DfT civil servants (often railway professionals on secondment) are not "fools" or "DafT", they are there to deliver government policy.
EMR will have put up a business case to order the class 810 fleet, and this was authorised at the time by DfT.
So EMR has to operate the intended fleet and also meet the cost targets that the DfT has set.
Changes to the service specification may occur, but cost will be a major factor

A good explanation

I’d love to know why some people think that these professionals who work in the industry are “clowns” and yet have an unshakable belief that there’s this magical cohort of “proper railwaymen” out there who’d be immune to all of the harsh political realities… maybe they are cryogenically stored in Box Hill tunnel waiting to be unfrozen?

While a number of enthusiasts are happy to say it will all be fine once the 810's arrive as they have more seats than a 5 car 222, and that busy services will be doubled up, they are all missing the fact that 5 car services were the short ones in the past. 7 / 9 / 10 car services provided the backbone of the MML service until the removal of the HSTs from the route. 4/5 car only services were concentrated on the Corby and Sheffield slow services. 165 cars of 810 stock are replacing 237 cars of HST/222 stock - it should be obvious to anybody that there is going to be a reduction in capacity

Some good points but some revisionism.

Midland Mainline started off with just a half hourly London service, then augmented with two coach 170s, later extended to three

Only seven of the 222 fleet were nine coaches, later downgraded to seven coaches (albeit a seven coach 222 has fewer seats than a five coach 810), the other sixteen 222s were put into service with just four coaches (some later extended to five coaches due to the reductions to the nine coach ones)

There were HSTs but generally stuck to the Neville Hill starters at peak times and the hourly Nottingham services

The uniform fleet of 810s means that platform space at St Pancras can be much more efficiently used, rather than the “fast” Nottingham HSTs needing a sixty five minute layover because they couldn’t work other northbound departures. In future an arrival from Nottingham can be a departure to Sheffield or vice versa

You then need to take the 360s into account when doing the maths since they replaced some 222s on Corby services

Given the apparent reduction to business travel, the number of peak only diagrams won’t be needed so much, so those nice long HST rakes that spend most of the day ticking over at Cricklewood won’t be missed so much

My view is that the 810s should be okay for the post-Covid world, the bigger issue is getting sufficient staff to work Sundays rather than just running hourly services on such a busy day (compared to the ECML when LNER run *more* London - Edinburgh trains on a Sunday Than during the week, but EMR only have the staff to run 50% of services)

 

[TheBigD]

My view is that the 810s should be okay for the post-Covid world, the bigger issue is getting sufficient staff to work Sundays rather than just running hourly services on such a busy day (compared to the ECML when LNER run *more* London - Edinburgh trains on a Sunday Than during the week, but EMR only have the staff to run 50% of services)

It's hourly until around 12:00 on Sundays, then 3tph until around 15:00, then the full 6tph service after 15:00, engineering work permitting.
The big limitation on Sunday mornings is that it is planned as a 2 track railway south of Bedford.

Agree with the 810s being sufficient, provided that they run the busy services doubled up, and double up when a reduced service is operating like Corby diversions etc etc.

 

[Deepgreen]

As with any other government-controlled bodies, they are accountable at the ballot box and can do as they please in the interim (it seems).

 

[TheBigD]

Some good points but some revisionism.

Midland Mainline started off with just a half hourly London service, then augmented with two coach 170s, later extended to three

Only seven of the 222 fleet were nine coaches, later downgraded to seven coaches (albeit a seven coach 222 has fewer seats than a five coach 810), the other sixteen 222s were put into service with just four coaches (some later extended to five coaches due to the reductions to the nine coach ones)

MML started with 13 x HST sets (31 power cars, 13 x 8 coach sets, and about 6 spare caoches).

The initial order was for 13 x 170/1 2 car units (24 1st + 97 std) for 11 diagrams. This was then increased to 17 x 2 car (15 diagrams), then further increased with the addition of 10 x centre cars. These had 21 1st + 22 std seats and a buffet counter, and were added to 170101-110, with the 24 original 1st seats declassified giving the 3 car sets 21st and 143 std seats.

2 of Porterbrook's spot hire 3 car 170s also saw use with MML (170397/8). I don't recall 2 car 170399 being used but it may well have been. Central Trains 170503 was also used for a while by MML.

The original 222 configuration was...
7 x 9 car (106 1st and 372 std)
16 x 4 car (50 1st and 124 std, though 28 x 1st were soon declassified).

They were then reformed to...
7 x 8 car sets (106/304)
7 x 5 car sets (50/192)
9 x 4 car sets (50/124 with 28 x 1st declassified).

EMT reformed them yet again (and added some extra luggage stacks)...
6 x 7 car (106/232)
17 x 5 car (50/190)

4 x 4 car (33/148) were added from Hull Trains when Corby reopened.

EMR have just reformed the fleet once more to...
4 x 7 car (106/232)
17 x 5 car (50/190)
2 x 5 car (33/214)
2 x 5 car (75/148 with some 1st declassified)
2 x 5 car (64/164 with some 1st declassified)

For reference the 33 x 810s will each seat 301 (47/254).

 

[43074]

My view is that the 810s should be okay for the post-Covid world, the bigger issue is getting sufficient staff to work Sundays rather than just running hourly services on such a busy day (compared to the ECML when LNER run *more* London - Edinburgh trains on a Sunday Than during the week, but EMR only have the staff to run 50% of services)

Most people you speak to with any experience of travelling on or working EMR Intercity services at the moment will tell you that another fleet of 5 car units will not be enough to meet the demand on the route.

I'm not convinced there will be many more 10 car services than at present despite the PR bluster about running 10 car trains with the 810s; indeed there is a reduction from May to satisfy DfT cost saving requirements.

 

[VauxhallNova]

Well, not quite. Don’t forget GWR still has to lose its HSTs within the next year, though I’m hearing suggestions that looks to be slipping to May 2024 (hardly surprising given the pressures on both IET and Turbo fleets).

The DfT payments to different operators make for interesting reading. Only one owning group has made significant divided payments from rail operations since 2020.

Sources below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ger-rail-operators-under-emergency-agreements

And RMTs reporting of it:

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/publications/bailing-out-the-tocs/bailing-out-the-tocs-27.06.22.pdf

 

[XIX7007177]

Not just limited to the DFT, the whole of the civil service is full of incompetent cretins wasting money and creating bureaucracy to justify their own jobs.

 

[JonathanH]

Not just limited to the DFT, the whole of the civil service is full of incompetent cretins wasting money and creating bureaucracy to justify their own jobs.

You do understand that there is a budget that guides the decisions they have to make? They have to do their best within those constraints.

Some may have an agenda, some may waste money but I'd imagine that some will try to do the best they can within the constraints they have to work with.

 

[185]

One can only hope, looking at two of their recently updated Linkedin profiles that the turkeys know Christmas is approaching, with a change of government (currently) likely, which will hopefully see a restructuring (or rather, waste disposal) exercise.

 

[JonathanH]

One can only hope, looking at two of their recently updated Linkedin profiles that the turkeys know Christmas is approaching, with a change of government (currently) likely, which will hopefully see a restructuring (or rather, waste disposal) exercise.

MPs yes. Would a labour government really come in and fire a load of civil servants? A cull of civil servants is generally something that people on the right of the political spectrum suggest.

 

[Fleetmaster]

Civil servants advise, ministers decide. Ad such, their public pillorying would be entirely inappropriate (and likely grounds for legal action against their employer, His Majesty)

Ministers are held accountable by Parliament, who in turn are held accountable by you. But for those who don't cast their general election vote based on Transport policy, there is the public pressure via media scrutiny of how Parliament holds the minister to account to ensure underperforming ministers are not rewarded for failure.

Standard UK democracy.

Doesn't even remotely work, and for reasons that can be found in all major UK parties, where party politics and the blame game has long trumped a sense of basic integrity.

We put up with it by voting for them time and again. Or more accurately, there is no penalty for politicians when their collective performance means "none of the above" is the winner. But on a point of fact, a turnout has to dip below 60% to be considered a sign of voter apathy here, and it happens rarely.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Do you think the first group influence in the RDG is also hampering things?

RDG don’t seem to have much influence in the DfT’s thinking. In the DfT’s eyes, RDG are just there to carry out their instructions.

FG don’t have any overriding influence in what is going on at RDG either.