Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
DFT, ATOC, NETWORK
RAIL, ORR AND
SRA
12 OCTOBER 2005
Q140 Mr Khan: You raise a good point
in answering the previous question. Southwest Trains, in fact,
want a holistic approach to Earlsfield station, which leads me
on to Mr Armitt. There is a half a hectare site available for
sale owned by Network Rail adjoining Earlsfield station. One would
have thought—especially reading your "hot off the press"
press release, talking about joined-up work in private finance
partnership—that when you sell this piece of land, you would
want to make sure that the planning gain is used to improve the
quality of services at Earlsfield station, but also for a development
which benefits local residents in the sort of way that the German
stations usually benefit German residents. I have been told that
the company selling the property on your behalf want the highest
bid available and approaches made by local developers to try a
holistic approach, in partnership with Southwest Trains, has been
discharged and they have been told that frankly we want the highest
bid because we want to cut and run and use the money for proceeds
elsewhere which could be stations in constituencies around this
table, which is all wonderful for them, but I want an improved
station in Earlsfield. What do you say to that?
Mr Armitt: I am surprised. Anyway,
whatever the local developer may wish to do, of course, he is
going to have to get planning consent for it and it would be absolutely
normal and to be expected in a situation like this, that he will
not get permission to do things without taking account of some
of the benefits which the station requires because the local authorities
will use all the powers they have to make sure the development
does take account of this issue.
Q141 Mr Khan: The site is owned by
Network Rail. You are going to sell it to the highest bidder,
who I am sure will put up luxury flats, that is what everyone
does, to make huge profits, and that site is now lost. Southwest
Trains are desperate to get hold of that site and work in partnership
with you, but you want the highest price.
Mr Armitt: I do not know the details
of this particular bid, but normally we would be looking for a
balanced bid which we will get. We want both. We will want the
very best bid that we can get and we will want to make the best
improvements we can to the station.
Q142 Mr Khan: In that case, will
you agree to delay the closing date for bids, which is 21 October,
for you to investigate whether or not Network Rail is acting in
the best interest of local residents in Tooting and Earlsfield
by going for the highest bid possible?
Mr Armitt: If the closing date
is 21 October, we will have a very long way to run if the bids
can come in on 21 October and then in appraising the bids we can
see what opportunities can be delivered through those bids to
benefit the station.
Q143 Mr Khan: Sorry to press you,
but somebody who once had a holistic approach has been discouraged
from putting that bid in but has been asked to put in a bid which
could compete with those who are putting in bids for, for example,
luxury flats.
Mr Armitt: I am quite happy to
receive bids on both cases and then judge on the value for money
at the end of the day which is the best. It could be that the
very best bid will give me a lot more money than the balanced
bid, in which case it might be better to take that extra money
and then spend it as Network Rail on stations elsewhere.
Q144 Mr Khan: Excellent. You are
going to reinvest the money for the better of Earlsfield and Tooting
residents, is that what you are saying?
Mr Armitt: No, I am saying that
we would take the money and spend it. As always, we have to prioritise
our spending and there could be other stations, it might even
be the next station down the line, where it would be more sensible
to spend the money than at Earlsfield. I cannot make a judgement
or a commitment on Earlsfield sitting here.[11]
Q145 Mr Khan: You are willing to look
into this and get back to me.
Mr Armitt: I will.
Q146 Mr Khan: I have got one other
final question to ask and it is probably for Dr Mitchell. I see
that rail passengers have increased by 22% since 1997, obviously
from the fantastic vibrant economy since then. Someone also mentioned
the fact that each year, year-on-year the increase in passenger
growth is about 5%-8%. In light of that, is it in your interest
to have more for the benefit of passengers? Why should you care
and do you care about having better facilities for your passengers
when you have full capacity and they will use your trains anyway
because they have no alternative?
Dr Mitchell: I believe the railways
in the UK are becoming quite a success story. We are growing in
passenger numbers every year. We are growing faster than any other
European railway, but we have got a lot to do. We have got a lot
to do with punctuality; 85% is not enough, we need to do better
than that. We need to do more on stations—and this is part
of the rationale of the Leipzig statement—we need to look
hard at how we deal with capacity. That is the biggest problem
we have and will have over the next few years that all of that
has to be taken into account. I am certainly not in favour of
a situation as you described.
Q147 Mr Khan: In the Report it was
reported most frequently about small low level problems, that
great perception of users at stations which is low level stuff.
What sort of approach are you taking to low level type things
which really would improve the quality of life of users at the
stations? You talked about graffiti, and there is violence at
my station, lifts are another thing as well.
Dr Mitchell: I think there are
some things which can be done following some of the successful
things in the UK, but also environmental factors, you can remove
some of the hiding places for people: parks, bushes, small buildings
on platforms and things like that. You can improve lighting, you
can improve signage and you can install close-circuit television
and that kind of thing. I totally agree that the perception of
safety is extremely important to people, almost more important
than the actual risks which exist. Some of these things do not
cost a lot of money. There is a £50 million a year pot available
for Network Rail to spend on minor enhancements which could include
things like that.
Q148 Kitty Ussher: I would like to
start by thanking the NAO for quite a useful Report and the team
who have obviously put a large amount of effort into this. I think
it is a Report the public will be extremely interested in, not
least because this is an issue which members of the public are
rightly very concerned about. Often it is quite difficult to find
out where they need to go to make improvements. I think the fact
that we have a large number of organisations in front of us today,
basically between them answering the same questions, rather proves
that point. We now have a spotlight shining on this, so hopefully
we can make some progress. Chairman, I hope you will forgive me
if I too am rather parochial in my questions in that I want to
take an example from my constituency, pretty much because it is
the situation I know best. I think it rather illustrates the point.
I am going to start with Dr Mitchell, if I may, in asking this
question. If I could describe the situation: I represent Burnley
in Lancashire, which is a town in a valley and has one main train
line running through it, which is the Trans-Pennine route. It
crosses the Pennines running to York, Leeds, Burnley Lancashire
Road station through to Blackburn and on to Preston and Blackpool.
I believe—correct me if I am wrong—the franchise has
recently changed and it is now Northern Trains. I think it was
called Trans-Pennine as well as being geographically the Trans-Pennine
route. It is the only way to commute to a major city: Leeds, Preston
or York, since although Manchester is nearby there is no direct
train to there. It has no train indicator, therefore you have
no idea when the train is coming. There are no waiting rooms at
all, so it gets rather cosy under one very small shelter when
it is raining, of course it never rains in Burnley, but there
are many times when that rule is broken and it does get rather
tight. There are no staff there whatsoever. I once saw a five
year old child who seemed to have no parent anywhere, obviously
he was wandering around the town, playing on the train line, with
no staff there at all and it meant that one of the few members
of the public who happened to be there had to get him off the
train line, and I do not think that is acceptable. There is no
ticket machine, no way of picking up tickets, no office whatsoever,
which means it is quite difficult sometimes to take advantage
of pre-payments for tickets on the major routes if you are not
confident that they will be sent to you in time, no toilets and
rubbish strewn everywhere. However, it does have a ramp, so it
does have some facilities. My question—and I think it is
from the public point of view—is given the evidence we have
received from this Report, where do we start in addressing these
problems? In particular, at what point do we come up against an
effective value for money question given that effectively it is
a monopoly route? There is no other way to get to Leeds, so the
passenger numbers, I guess, would not vary hugely, although there
is clearly a very large demand for improvements.
Dr Mitchell: As I said to the
previous Member, we have a lot to do. We have a limited amount
of money available. The Government is spending £87 million
per year on railways, Clearly it has to be prioritised. As several
of us have said, in the early years of the century we had to give
priority to safety and other things. I do not think anyone would
disagree that was the right thing to do. Now we have got to the
point where we have the benefit of this Report and we have the
benefit of the RPC report and we are working now on a strategy
for all stations, as I outlined before. I think we can start addressing
some of these issues. Clearly, I could not defend the kind of
things which you have outlined, no one would. No one would want
to be in that position. It is a question of how do we prioritise,
how do we make sure that the right value for money is achieved
and then move forward. [12]
Q149 Kitty Ussher: Can I probe you a
little bit more on value for money. What calculation do you do
at that point when you are trying to work out value for money?
Dr Mitchell: It is very similar
to the answer Mr Newton gave. Effectively, the value for money
calculations which the Department for Transport do are pretty
much the same as the ones which the Strategic Rail Authority did
when it had responsibility for this. What we are basically looking
for is the best return in terms of what we would get back from
the money spent because we have limited resources, and I am afraid
we have to prioritise.
Q150 Kitty Ussher: The best return
in what sense, passenger numbers?
Dr Mitchell: It has to be turned
into a financial return, but we can turn most of the outputs that
we are looking for back into a financial number, so that we can
then see how we rank one thing against another. It has to be done
that way because that is the lowest common denominator between
schemes, if you like.
Q151 Kitty Ussher: When you have
a situation—I am sure my constituency is not the only one—where
in a more remote community there is no other way to travel from
A to B, how would you start to assess a financial return of raising
the standard of the station?
Dr Mitchell: The sort of things
that would be taken into account are obviously the costs of what
is proposed; secondly, the number of people that could benefit
from it and the other benefits which we might gain from that are,
for example, an increased number of passengers, attracting new
investment—which I am sure Mr Armitt would look at—and
these kind of issues.
Q152 Kitty Ussher: Just to push you
further on value for money, do you think it is possible that calculation
might come out as such that you would do the investment even if
the passenger numbers do not increase as a result? Could you look
purely at the number of existing passengers or would you have
to demonstrate that the number of passengers would actually increase?
Dr Mitchell: It is possible.
Q153 Kitty Ussher: Chairman, if I
may use the remaining time to draw attention particularly to paragraph
2.9. Mr Muir, you said you required Network Rail to provide more
information about how it spends the money from the train operating
companies which you represent. What type of information do you
require?
Mr Muir: We would like a better
understanding of the disposition of the rental money which we
pay. We know that some of that rental money is allocated towards
remunerating their asset base in stations, which is about £2
billion. Also, some of our rental money is intended to be spent
on stations. I know that they spend substantially the right amount
of money, but whether it is exactly the same, I do not know. Train
operators would like to know more about the overall distribution
of their money. I would say that since this Report was written,
and since the interviews and work which went into this, I think
relations between train operators and Network Rail have got a
lot better. It is a developing relationship and our experience
on the ground now—which is confirmed by speaking to train
operators before coming here—is of an increasing level of
comfort and confidence that Network Rail understands our issues
and we understand Network Rail's issues. Nonetheless, some more
transparency would be useful.
Q154 Kitty Ussher: Perhaps we could
take this opportunity to provide it. Would Mr Armitt care to respond
to that? Are you now able to provide that information?
Mr Armitt: I am not entirely sure
what information they would like. Our business plan, which is
published every year, sets out our spending plans route by route
and to a degree does specify which stations we are going to be
spending money on, particularly in terms of improving stations
in the next five years. We do provide information as to where
we expect to spend money. Train operators are obviously very well
aware of what we are spending on their particular stations because
they usually work with us in organising the expenditure and they
can see how much is being spent on their particular part of the
network.
Q155 Kitty Ussher: Mr Muir, are you
now satisfied?
Mr Muir: We have more to talk
about. I want to emphasise that relations and working together
is a lot better than it was a year ago, and I am confident that
we will work this thing out between us.
Q156 Kitty Ussher: Mr Bolt, perhaps
you can turn to paragraph 2.11 in the Report. There seems to have
been some problem with clarifying who is responsible for station
repairs and maintenance. Is this something you now feel has been
sorted out and why was there a difficulty in the first place?
Mr Bolt: I think the issue is
not so much being clear as to who is responsible for what but
having a more rational allocation, so that Network Rail is responsible
for the whole of the maintenance and renewal of particular assets
and train operators are responsible for the customer facing assets.
The Stations Code, which we are hoping will be in place next April,
is designed to get that clearer, more rational, division of responsibilities.
Kitty Ussher: I am sure that will help
us all.
Q157 Stephen Williams: I think this
question is probably best directed initially to Mr Muir, but maybe
another witness might think differently. First of all, on passenger
safety paragraph 3.16 suggests that if passengers were more confident
that there were safety improvements being put in place, it could
lead to a 15% uplift in people travelling by either train or on
the Underground. Elsewhere in this Report it is not clear how
many small stations, in particular where you are most likely to
feel vulnerable, have CCTV or a panic button or a help point in
place. Given that there is a target in paragraph 3.17 of reducing
crime against passengers by 7.5%—which is due to be met
in two months' time and it will be interesting to see whether
that has been met—do you also have a target for having CCTV
help points and panic buttons in all small stations?
Mr Muir: We do not have targets
for CCTV at all stations, but what train operators do have, and
have quite extensively, is target date measures which are appropriate
to improve associate stations. They have been focusing CCTV, for
example, at the stations which need it. Some stations will have
an extraordinary number, between 20 and 50 CCTV cameras in some
stations, so it is being very targeted by the train operators.
Q158 Stephen Williams: That large
number of cameras is presumably at large stations rather than
small stations?
Mr Muir: At some quite small stations
I discovered they had 30 CCTV cameras and it stunned me when I
saw it.
Q159 Stephen Williams: Do you have
any idea how many small stations would have no personal safety
enhancements at all?
Mr Muir: Of the 2,500 I expect
a very large percentage will not have CCTV cameras. Indeed, I
would be surprised if more than a quarter had them because train
operators are focusing on where it is needed.
11 Note by witness: We are still finalising
the initial list of stations to receive investment so it is not
possible to give an answer in to relation to Earlsfield at this
moment. Back
12
Ev 25-26 Back
| 
