Interview
‘So I think I’ve got the best job in the industry,
actually!’ That was at the start of 2011. Unfortunately, Hull Trains struggled with performance issues during Proctor’s fi rst year, but things are looking up again. There were infrastructure problems on the East Coast Main Line that led to cancellations. The company also had problems with rolling stock. The Class 180s, also known as Adelantes, that it inherited from First Great Western have been plagued with problems. ‘The 180s have been exceptionally unreliable and
diffi cult since their inception. They have had a really quite serious impact on Hull’s ability to deliver a reliable service. We got hit by that back in June, July and August when, at one point, we were cancelling up to 30 per cent of our services due to train failures. No railway company can stand that and an open access company is even more at risk. So, the following two or three months were spent making sure we were working with our partners, Angel Trains and Network Rail, appropriately.’ Angel has now started a multi-million pound modifi cation of all its Alstom-built Class 180s. Bellamy is determined to improve Hull Trains’
performance and its profi tability. The company made a loss in 2010 – the last fi nancial year for which its accounts are publicly available. But it is moving back into profi t, says Bellamy. And she’s confi dent that revenue will grow in the long term. Hull Train is FirstGroup’s only open access venture
– open access operations being those that are run on purely commercial lines and not as part of a franchise agreement – and it’s not been an easy time for non- franchised passenger operators. Wrexham & Shropshire ceased operations last year, leaving Grand Central and Hull Trains as the only two survivors. Grand Central, which has just been bought by Arriva, has also been struggling. FirstGroup sold off one of its other ‘non- core’ divisions – GB Railfreight – 18 months ago, but Bellamy says that the transport group has no plans to dispose of Hull Trains. ‘FirstGroup have communicated to me that they
support both franchised and open access operations and there is an argument to have both in the UK rail network.’ Both Hull Trains and Grand Central want to
expand, but the ORR is not always keen to approve new open access routes. Currently, Hull Trains runs seven return services from Hull to London on weekdays and fi ve each way on Saturdays and Sundays. In 2009, it applied to operate services between King’s Cross and Harrogate via York, but this was rejected by the ORR. The company has more plans to expand, but Bellamy won’t divulge what they are. Its current access agreement runs until 2016, so Hull Trains also needs to negotiate renewal of that. Does she think that the government is in favour of
further open access operations? ‘It is unclear how the DfT feel about open access,
because they have said some things that imply they’re positive about competition and they’ve said other
things that imply they’re not. So I think the whole subject of consultation on rail competition is very interesting and we look forward to seeing how that’s concluded. Until the governance of this industry has resolved this matter, it’s diffi cult for us as operators to be able to pull together investment programmes and plans to go forward and extend our agreements. ‘It’s absolutely not true to say that open access is
simply removing money from the taxpayer’s pocket or that it’s easy to make money on open access, because it’s not – there are pressures on both sides. But you might not want open access on some of the major routes and lose government control of that,’ she concedes. In the meantime, her mission is to drive up
passenger numbers on the current services. Hull Trains has borrowed an additional unit from Grand Central to improve performance levels and has introduced frills to improve the passenger experience, such as free wi-fi throughout the train. ‘I think I was asked to join because the company had started to slow down and had started to lose a little bit of ground in terms of its magic and sparkle. FirstGroup is all about being best in class. The priority for the next 12 months is to make sure that we continue to do what we need to do here to continue to be fi nancially viable. And in the recession, actually, that’s quite a challenge on its own.’
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MARCH 2012 PAGE 21
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