Two trips to York in 3 days. The first, on 6th July, was to participate in the DfT consultation on the new CrossCountry franchise. DfT has some rather worrying ideas about wanting to cut out the stops on CrossCountry trains at smaller stations such as Morpeth. SENRUG will make a formal response to the consultation, our point being that before doing that, DfT would have to significantly boost local services, and neither DfT nor the train operators have the ability to do that at present. On the way home, I bumped in to Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery at Newcastle station, and discussed the issue with him. We set up a meeting for later this month, which will be an opportunity to give Ian a general update on SENRUG’s work.
Then back to York again today for CrossCountry’s own Community Rail Partnership Day, this time with a focus on rail safety. SENRUG is not a CRP, our focus mainly being on campaigning and lobbying. But we do constantly review whether we should become one. This would mean setting up a formal legal organisation and our volunteer committee members becoming Directors, which is more than some people are willing to do as their voluntary commitments with SENRUG must fit around other work and business responsibilities. However, it seems that all the train companies (not just CrossCountry) have considerable funding to make available to CRPs, and it is a pity that SENRUG, despite all the good work it does, cannot avail itself of that money under the present arrangements. That said, the day was nevertheless interesting, lots of good initiatives across the CrossCountry network, and an opportunity to chat informally to CrossCountry MD Andy Cooper during the break.
