Great Western Railway Annual Stakeholder Report 2018-19 THE FAMOUS FIVE © 2017, Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. Contents 1.0 Managing Director, Foreword 5 2.0 Mark Langman, Western Route Managing Director 6 Lord Richard Faulkner, Chair of our Advisory Board 8 3.0 Our Strategic Priorities and Business Wheel 10 4.0 Delighting Our Customer 12 4.1 Customer Satisfaction 13 4.2 Customer Correspondence 14 4.3 Even Smarter Ticketing 16 4.4 ‘Delay Repay 15’ secured for passengers 17 4.5 ‘Assisted Travel 18 4.6 What our customers said 19 4.7 The Night Riviera Sleeper 19 4.8 Rolling stock improvements for May 2019 20 4.9 New Intercity Express Train Carries Passengers 20 4.10 Windsor & Eton Station Renamed Harry & Megan Central 21 4.11 New Look for Customer Ambassadors 22 5.0 Disciplined Operations 23 5.1 Performance Overview 24 5.2 Preventing accidents and ill health at work 26 5.3 Stakeholder Reputation Audit 27 5.4 Infrastructure Improvements 30 5.5 Timetable Changes 31 5.6 Heathrow Express 35 5.7 Introducing... FLEX 35 6.0 Great People 36 6.1 Our Vision 37 6.2 Apprenticeships 39 6.3 Colleague Empowerment 41 6.4 Excellence Awards 42 6.5 Golden Whistle Awards 43 6.6 Five go on a Great Western Adventure 44 6.7 The 2019 Rail Business Awards 45 3 7.0 Keeping Our Communities Prospering 46 7.1 Customer and Community Improvement Fund 47 7.2 Community improvement scheme 50 7.3 GWR unveils the Pride of the Fleet 51 7.4 Great Western Railway nameplate 52 7.5 Association of Community Rail Partnership Awards 53 7.6 Recognition for Supporting Charity 54 7.7 Money Raised 54 7,8 Community Apprentice 55 7.9 Community Rail Partnerships 56 - Three Rivers Community Rail Partnership 56 - TransWilts Community Rail Partnership 57 - North Downs Line Community Rail Partnership 58 - Devon & Cornwall Community Rail Partnership 59 - Heart of Wessex Community Rail Partnership 61 - Severnside Community Rail Partnership 63 7.10 Sustainability 67 8.0 Driving Business Growth 69 8.2 Regional Development - Central 70 8.3 Regional Development - East 72 8.4 Regional Development - West 74 List of Contributors Mark Langman - Route Managing Director, Network Rail Lord Faulkner of Worcester – Chairman of GWR Advisory Board Anthony Smith – Chief Executive, Transport Focus Mayor Tim Bowles – West of England Combined Authority Dick Fearn - Chairman of Western Route Supervisory Board Councillor Jeanette Clifford - West Berkshire Council Chris Irwin - TravelWatch SouthWest Three Rivers Rail Partnership The Heart of Wessex Rail Partnership TransWilts Community Rail Partnership North Downs Line Community Rail Partnership The Severnisde Community Rail Partnership Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership Jack Boskett Photography 4 5 1.0 Managing Director Foreword 2018 was a difficult year for our customers and our stakeholders. Performance was not good enough and we had too many cancellations and too many delays. 2018 was a difficult year for our customers and our Coupled with the improved infrastructure this will mean stakeholders. Performance was not good enough and we had we are able to deliver the predictability of services that our too many cancellations and too many delays. In the main customers want and that businesses need to thrive and grow. this was caused by the combination of moving from our old rolling stock to brand new and refreshed trains at the same As well as the new trains this year has seen GWR introduce time as Network Rail undertook the largest programme of smart cards and mobile ticketing. We have also continued our track improvements ever made in a single year. programme of investment in stations and car parks, working alongside our partners in the industry, in Local Enterprise It was painful, and we have apologised to customers for the Partnerships and in local and national Government. impact to their journeys. The majority of the transition is now complete, and we are seeing sustained improvement It was a hard year, and our satisfaction scores with in performance. An improvement that I expect to continue stakeholders did fall, I understand why, and I am confident throughout this year, culminating in a new timetable with we can regain your trust and rebuild and surpass previous more frequent, faster journeys and more seats. scores. This will be the biggest timetable change since 1976 and We are listening, we are investing and together we will will see changes to 75% of our services. It realises the deliver the rail services you need. benefits of the investment in track and train and will mean Thank you for all your help this year. I will keep in touch on that compared to 2015, we add a further 10,000 seats to the our timetable plans and I am always happy to hear from you. morning peak into Paddington every day. Mark Hopwood We are determined that our customers, and the Managing Director communities, we serve will have the best rail services [email protected] possible. Our investment in a further fleet of tri-mode trains means that when our rolling stock transformation is complete every GWR customer will be using new or refurbished trains. 6 2.0 Mark Langman, Western Route Managing Director 2018 saw the promises made over the last decade start to become a reality; and our focus now is delivering the improvements to passengers with the new timetables in May and December 2019. The end of the financial year in March also brought the is already being implemented, will be greater devolution end of our five-year funding period. In the last year our through changes to the way Network Rail is structured in teams have made huge progress in delivering infrastructure order to better deliver for passengers. improvements from Paddington to Penzance. Our Alliance with GWR has gone from strength to strength, We finished installing and switched on the overhead electric delivering innovative schemes and reducing costs to the power cables between Didcot Parkway and Bristol Parkway, taxpayer. This has been recognised across the industry; we and from Reading to Newbury. For GWR, this meant being were jointly awarded ‘best collaboration’ at the 2018 Rail able to use the Intercity Express Trains to their full ability; Partnership Awards and ‘rail team of the year’ at the 2019 improving performance and reliability for passengers. Rail Business Awards. We also completed an extensive resignalling programme Throughout the year we worked hard to get more trains with projects in Cornwall, Oxford and the West of England. arriving on time, with a jointly agreed performance Passengers are already seeing the benefits of this work improvement plan. There is always more to do but by the with delays reduced, and an increased number of services end of 2018/19 the route was able to deliver the best train between Penzance and Plymouth starting in May 2019. performance since 2012. Platforms were extended at stations in the Cotswolds, We should never forget that safety is at the heart of everything Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. This enabled passengers to we do. We will never take for granted running a safe railway board GWR’s fleet of longer trains with more seats. and focus relentlessly on ensuring that everyone who travels or works on the railway gets home safely every day. Government funding was confirmed for the first phase of our work at Dawlish and we now have permission to build a Our absolute focus for the year ahead is delivering more seats new sea wall; maintaining the vital rail link between Devon, and quicker journeys for passengers with May and December Cornwall and the rest of the UK. 2019 timetable changes. This has only been possible thanks to the investment over the last 10 years, and the continued To get us ready for our new funding period – running from close working between GWR and Network Rail. 2019 to 2024 – we have been working with stakeholders on our five-year plan for the railway, based on our joint Despite the winds of uncertainty that surround the industry priorities. This £2.4bn business plan was agreed by the and political scene in 2019, I am confident the best is yet ORR last year, thanks to your support. Our ambitious plan to come from our Alliance, the Western route and for the includes providing an additional 140,000 train services every people of the regions we serve. year on our route, as well as major improvements to our infrastructure to help more trains run on time, every time. Best wishes Our new chief executive, Andrew Haines, started in August Mark Langman 2018 with his first action being a comprehensive review of Route Managing Director, Western how Network Rail works. The result of this review, which Network Rail 7 8 Lord Richard Faulkner Chair of our Advisory Board “In the amalgamation of great railway systems some years ago the Great Western alone kept its identity. It is still the Great Western; no muddling outsiders have come to introduce damnable improvements, economies, and modernizations. It is conspicuously more the Great Western than ever.” These words were written by the great 20th century We can be cautiously optimistic that better times have now novelist, Arnold Bennett, in an article in the Railway Gazette arrived, with recent punctuality and performance figures in October 1926. significantly up on where we were a year ago. Last year I reported that GWR had won three awards and received It would be stretching the imagination to claim that today’s a “highly commended” at the 20th Rail Business Awards, Great Western Railway is the same company that Arnold including the prestigious “Rail Business of the Year” Bennett knew and admired almost 100 years ago, but surely award.