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Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

Is that good or bad? Seems like they are saying "we want our buddies First to have it, or else no one can".
 
Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

We could hope this happens to every franchise so that the Government gradually regains state control over them all? XD
 
Re: Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

mrbrightside said:
We could hope this happens to every franchise so that the Government gradually regains state control over them all? XD
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Well, we shall see if that could happen next year when the East Coast franchise is up for renewal from the current state-owned company.
 
Re: Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

State owned could be good or bad depending on how it is run........... I don't think the Tories would be up to running it correctly.

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Re: Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

They are as bad as Merlin are with their bottle designs in doing this. Have they tested First? Probably not. Like Merlin clearly don't test their bottles.

Just to say I am currently sat on a First bus and the seat is rock hard, the bus was overcrowded earlier and they are late. Always late on the way home.

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Re: Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

I has good news. Apparently, the bidding process for the WCML is going to be done again. Finally - a victory for common sense! :D

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This is interesting - it is only a day before the DfT were due to present their evidence in court, so this decision seems to have come at the 11th hour.

The new tendering process could take up to 18 months, so it's likely we'll see DOR for quite a while on the West Coast. I hear that each of the bidders have been refunded by the DfT on the costs of their bid, a figure around £50m in total.
 
From the BBC:

West Coast Main Line deal scrapped after contract flaws discovered

The decision to award the UK's multi-billion-pound West Coast Main Line rail franchise to FirstGroup has been scrapped by the government.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said it was "deeply regrettable" that mistakes had been made by staff within the Department for Transport. Several staff have been suspended.

The estimated cost of reimbursing the companies for the mistakes will be £40m, he said.

FirstGroup said it was "disappointed".

The company had beaten current operator Virgin Trains to win the 13-year franchise after a 15-month bidding process.

The West Coast route serves 31 million passengers travelling between London, the West Midlands, the north-west of England, North Wales and the central belt of Scotland.

Mr McLoughlin emphasised that neither company had done anything wrong during the process. The "fault lies wholly and squarely with the Department of Transport", he said.


The estimated £40m is the cost of reimbursing the costs of the four companies who entered into the bidding process, he said.

Writing on his blog, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson welcomed the move, details of which emerged in the early hours on Wednesday, adding that he was hopeful ministers would "now accept that Virgin Trains should carry on running the West Coast Main Line".

BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott says the implications of the decision to scrap the deal go much further than just the West Coast Main Line.

There were about 15 rail franchises due to be decided before the next general election and the whole franchising process could now be thrown into doubt, he adds.

The August announcement that FirstGroup would take over train services on the line - one of Britain's busiest - in December had sparked a legal challenge from Virgin, which has run the franchise since 1997.

The Department for Transport said because of the decision to rerun the bidding process it would no longer be contesting the judicial review launched by Virgin Trains in the High Court.

And it said an announcement would be made about the suspension of staff.

Mr McLoughlin, who became transport secretary just three weeks ago, described the mistakes made by his department as "deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable".

He said: "A detailed examination by my officials into what happened has revealed these flaws, and means it is no longer acceptable to award a new franchise on the basis of the competition that was held.

"West Coast passengers can rest assured that while we seek urgently to resolve the future arrangements the trains that run now will continue to run with the same drivers, the same staff and timetables as planned."

Two reviews have been ordered. One would examine how the West Coast franchise competition went wrong, and what lessons could be learned. It would be headed by Sam Laidlaw, a non-executive director of the department, and is expected to report by the end of the month.

The other review would look into the wider Department for Transport rail franchise programme, and be overseen by Eurostar chairman Richard Brown. His report is expected by the end of December.

Three other franchise competitions had also been "paused" in light of the West Coast Main Line situation, he confirmed.

"I want to make sure what lessons need to be learnt from what went wrong with this have not been repeated in those particular franchises."

'Frank announcement'
FirstGroup said that it had had "no indication" of any problems with the franchising process until it was contacted by the Department for Transport.

"We are extremely disappointed to learn this news, and await the outcome of the DfT's inquiries," the company said.

"The DfT has made it clear to us that we are in no way at fault, having followed the due process correctly. We submitted a strong bid, in good faith and in strict accordance with the DfT's terms."

Asked whether it was considering legal action, a spokesman said: "It is early days but we are considering our position." The company's shares dropped 17%.

In a statement, Virgin Trains welcomed what it described as the transport secretary's "frank announcement" that the contest was flawed.

It said: "We are ready to play a full part in assisting the review to help deliver a franchising system that better serves passengers, taxpayers and the interests of all bidders."

Labour MP Louise Ellman, chairwoman of the Commons Transport Select Committee, described the development as "absolutely astonishing".

She said: "I'm going to recall the secretary of state and the permanent secretary to the Transport Select Committee, to question them about just what has gone wrong.

"This is really a major issue and a major catastrophe for them."

After learning that his firm had lost the bid in August Sir Richard said he was convinced that civil servants had "got their maths wrong."

He asked that the signing of the contract could be delayed so that the process could be reviewed.

Justine Greening, who was Transport Secretary at the time, defended what she described as the "robustness of the process".

In August, Labour had also called for a chance for MPs to review the process.

Following the cancellation, shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle said: "The West Coast rail franchise fiasco has yet again exposed the shambolic incompetence of this Tory-led government.

"The government's belated admission that it ran a flawed tendering process will come as a surprise to no one."

She called for full details to be revealed and said Mr McLoughlin should "come clean on the full cost to taxpayers of this shambles".
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Re: Virgin Trains lose West Coast Franchise

FirstGroup's shares are down by 19.8% following this news. I'm not at all surprised that they've gone down, but I'm surprised at the size of the fall!

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It looks as if we have another year of Virgin running the line:

Virgin Trains has agreed to continue running the West Coast Main Line for up to 13 months while the Government resolves the flawed process that saw FirstGroup initially awarded the franchise.

The temporary agreement was proposed by the Department for Transport (DfT) after its embarrassing U-turn earlier this month when it admitted it got its sums wrong in its decision to give the business to FirstGroup.

Virgin's current franchise is due to end on December 9 but it has agreed to remain as operator while a competition is run for an interim franchise agreement.

Sir Richard Branson had led a campaign against the initial award to FirstGroup, claiming the 13-year deal would likely bankrupt the company, resulting in a legal challenge.

After discovering the errors and withdrawing the contract on October 3, the DfT later apologised to then-Transport Secretary Justine Greening who had sought repeated assurances from officials that the bid calculations were correct.

Three civil servants were suspended when the "significant technical flaws" came to light and a review process was launched.

Patrick McLoughlin, who replaced Ms Greening in a Cabinet re-shuffle, said today: "The cancellation of the InterCity West Coast franchise is deeply regrettable and I apologise to the bidders involved and taxpayers who have a right to expect better.

"My priority now is to fix the problem and the first step is to take urgent action to ensure that on December 9 services continue to run to the same standard and passengers are not affected.

The RMT transport union had wanted the West Coast franchise to be run by the DfT in the public sector, as is the case at the moment with the East Coast franchise.

RMT leader Bob Crow said: "This announcement is no surprise. The Government are ideologically opposed to public ownership of the railways and, in collusion with the private train operators, have stitched up a shabby deal that will enable them to rerun the whole franchise fiasco in a year's time.

"Richard Branson and his shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank."

A Virgin Trains spokesman said: "Our customers have made clear they want us to continue our excellent service and we now have the chance to deliver that and offer customers some short-term continuity.

"We will now be working hard to make sure we continue to provide the service that has made us successful. We are grateful for the fantastic support from customers and staff over recent months."
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The news article can be found here.
 
Branson has this image as a nice guy because he's media-savvy and has somehow constructed this image as some sort of hero, crusading for the common man.

Really he's just another revoltingly wealthy tax-avoiding crook who shouldn't be given the time of day, nevermind a train franchise.
 
Do you have any better ideas then Sam? I would much rather his company (in conjunction with Stagecoach, don't forget!) ran the WCML than another - smaller - company who don't have enough funding behind them, thus raising prices and cutting service quality, or the Government being forced to subsidise them further.
 
Mike said:
Do you have any better ideas then Sam?
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Yes. Nationalise the trains and have them run by the government. All profits put back either into investment in infrastructure or lower fares. No public money wasted on stupid procurement investigations or massive legal battles like this.

Then maybe our trains wouldn't be the most expensive in Europe.
 
There are pros and cons of bringing back BR (or DOR as they are in their current form with East Coast) - it's not all rosy in other countries where railways are run by the state.

If people are interested - it would be well worth checking out http://railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=57588 as theres quite a lengthy (reasoned for the most part!) debate on the pros & cons of privatisation :)

(In the interests of full disclosure - I am one of the administrators for the site, but genuinely think that this is one of the better discussions on the subject)
 
The only problem with Rail Nationalisation (and in principle, I feel this IS the best route), is that the Government run it, thereby, completely negating the point I made in brackets.

That shouldn't really require too much more explanation.

If any doubt remains, that this government could not run a fully nationalised rail service in a proper manner - just take a look at the NHS, and what was once a shining beacon of a more proud socialistic structure post WWII
 
TheMan said:
If any doubt remains, that this government could not run a fully nationalised rail service in a proper manner - just take a look at the NHS, and what was once a shining beacon of a more proud socialistic structure post WWII
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The NHS is one of the best health care systems in the western world. Our train system is one of the worst. What's your point...?
 
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