Pitiful Northern Rail slammed by MP as improvements demanded
Plus: Town centre advertising screens rejected over conservation issues
Hello and welcome to the 20th edition of The Southport Lead.
Today’s edition takes a look at the performance of Northern Rail after reports from The Lead’s national title showed the embattled rail operator received more than half a million pounds in out of court settlements over prosecutions which were being carried out wrongly.
Northern Rail has endured a sorry reputation in Southport and the wider area in recent years and the town’s MP Patrick Hurley was deeply critical of the operator when speaking to The Southport Lead.
My own recent experiences with Northern Rail have been frustrating and like the MP, I will tend to drive rather than use public transport but this should not be the case. Of my last three Northern Rail experiences, one involved me having to leave an gig early because even on Saturday nights the trains do not run late enough; another involved a Blackpool-Wigan train which terminated in Preston without any explanation, and a third involved a slow running service to Manchester Airport which caused a great deal of stress as I doubted whether I’d make the flight in time.
On that latter occasion, staff on board explained that a cleaner had turned off an engine as the other one was being turned on which caused a rare glitch which meant the first could not be switch back on. When I approached the press office, Northern Rail denied this was the case and insisted the issue was a “mechanical fault”.
Regardless of the true reason, what’s struck me on each occasion where a Northern Rail service has gone wrong is the acceptance of passengers - delays and cancellations have simply become routine and people are no longer surprised. The responses I received when I posted about the airport delay only backed this up as people told me they had learned to account for such issues when using the service. Surely we can expect better than this?
Also in today’s edition are the latest headlines from across the town and news of why giant advertising boards will not be allowed to be installed on the pavement along London Street.
“Yet another example of their manifest failure to get to grips with absolutely anything”
Northern Rail is in a “pitiful state of affairs” and “totally incompetent”, according to Southport MP Patrick Hurley.
Mr Hurley said the rail operator’s senior leadership needed to take more accountability after years of complaints over delays, cancellations, slow services, and timetabling issues.
The Labour MP spoke to The Southport Lead after new data published by our national title showed the company had raked in more than £500,000 from out of court settlements for fare evasions in the last four years. Some of the fines that have been paid – and can’t now be overturned – should never have been pursued.
Responding to this, Mr Hurley said: “It’s yet another example of their manifest failure to get to grips with absolutely anything.”
The fines were handed out as part of the controversial Single Justice Procedure (SJP) which was designed to fast track minor offences to free up valuable court time amid major budget cuts across the criminal justice system.
However, the SJP has been woefully administered and led to huge numbers of people being unfairly prosecuted and left with criminal sentences as magistrates spent mere seconds considering each case behind closed doors. This covers not just fare evasion being prosecuted by rail operators, but also the likes of motoring offences and non-payments of the TV licence.
While almost 6,000 Northern Rail cases have been settled out of court at an average agreement of £95.11 each, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring ruled in August that more than 74,000 prosecutions for fare evasion across a variety of rail operators were brought unlawfully because they were not permitted to use the SJP.
It is just the latest in a string of problems involving Northern Rail, which was taken under government ownership in 2020 but has still faced widespread criticism from passengers and transport groups. Among frequent criticisms are the amount of services cancelled - particularly on Sundays when it relies on staff choosing to work as they are not contracted to do so.
Other issues include its antiquated trains frequently suffering from faults which mean they either cannot run or are delayed. Another common complaint in Southport is the lack of a regular direct link to Manchester Piccadilly, a timetable which offers little to commuters, and a slow service which runs too infrequently.
Mr Hurley said: “It’s got to the stage with Northern Rail where they are totally incompetent at almost everything they do. The service between Southport and Manchester, the timetable is rarely accurate and even when it is it still takes forever to get to Manchester.
“The rolling stock, when their own chief executive has said they’ve got the worst rolling stock in the country, it shows what state they’ve got to. It’s a pitiful state of affairs.
“Where we’ve got to at this stage speaking March 2025, it’s been under state ownership and the senior team have had enough time to get to grips with all the ancillary problems that are leading to the poor performance.
In response to this, Northern says it is in the process of improving performance and reliability and pointed to statistics which showed in the last month (Feb 2 - March 1) it ran 96.7% of services in its timetable and 81.6% (four out of five) arrived within three minutes of schedule.
For many rail users tired of being let down by Northern, this still isn’t good enough and leaves little confidence that they can complete their journeys on the service. Earlier this month, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham discussed the possibility of bringing Southport into the Bee Network public transport system. Hurley says he is open to this idea but his main priority is that the operator is overhauled and brought under better leadership, regardless of which agency is responsible for the improvement.
“Whether or not we are brought into the Bee Network, I just want the service to improve. If the outcome of the Bee Network is the service going through West Lancashire, Bolton into Manchester improves, I’ve got no problem with that.
“I’m not bothered with the minutiae of which agency runs the service, I just want a reliable service which turns up when it’s supposed to.”
Mr Hurley says other MPs in areas with Northern Rail links to Manchester share this frustration and that such poor performance is a “Northern problem specific to one train operating company and when other train operating companies can cope, it has to be the people who are running Northern Rail who are to blame”.
He continued: “I can’t see any sign that their senior leadership grasp the scale of their failure. Yes they acknowledge the shortcomings but they’ve got to come up with a realistic plan to fix things.
“Whenever I’m travelling from Southport to Manchester, which is probably only once a month now, I will only ever drive because I can’t guarantee the train will get there on time. I certainly can’t guarantee that if I get to Manchester that I will get home. You don’t want to end up at Manchester Oxford Road searching around to find someone who can get you a taxi back.”
Northern’s leadership has changed since the start of the year, with Tricia Williams appointed as managing director and Matt Rice taking over as chief operating officer. After her appointment, Ms Williams said: “After three great years as chief operating officer, it’s an absolute honour to be taking on the managing director role from this week.
“I know we have big challenges ahead of us but Northern is in a strong position and Matt and the rest of the director leadership team are committed to creating an inclusive culture, improving performance and our customer experience.”
The operator also directed The Southport Lead to an announcement from January in which it stated it planned to introduce up to 450 new trains to its network. At the time, it said that two thirds of the existing fleet is targeted to be replaced in the next ten years. It is expected the contract will be awarded to the successful bidder or bidders in 2026, with an aim to have first trains delivered to Northern by 2030.
In response to Mr Hurley’s comments, a spokesperson said: “We are delivering our plan to improve performance and provide customers across the North of England with a reliable service.
“Addressing the underlying issue of conductor availability is our number one priority and we are working to secure a new agreement that will mean we are no longer reliant on them volunteering to work Sundays.
“We are also working to reduce sickness levels by helping staff return to work as well as introducing state-of-the-art simulators to accelerate our training programme and planning to make the largest ever investment in our fleet by introducing up to 450 new trains.
“We appreciate that performance in some parts of our network, which consists of 2,500 daily services covering more than 3,000km, has not been good enough and we are determined to fix this as quickly as possible for our customers.”
For those interested, here is Northern Rail story referenced above
Pavement advertising board rejected
Plans to install a large advertising screen fitted with a defibrillator in Southport town centre have been rejected by Sefton Council.
Advertising giant JC Decaux is rolling out huge numbers of its “detached communication
hubs” which it says are designed as a modern replacement of a telephone box. The units, which are more than 2.5 metres tall, offer a range of public services including free wifi, free calls to landlines and a defibrillator.
Crucially for JC Decaux, they also feature large electronic screens on the reverse of the unit.
Its application stated: “The traditional role of the telephone box seems ill equipped to keep pace with the modern digital environment. The proposed Hubs will act as portals to enable people to access digital networks and to complement any existing free Wi-Fi 4G/5G provision, whilst the advertising screen will promote and strengthen the role and support the retail function of the centre to draw visitors and shoppers alike.”
Similar ones have been approved for Chapel Street but the idea of installing one outside the Nationwide bank on London Street fell foul of the Lord Street Conservation Area.
A notice for the planning refusal states: “The proposal is not sympathetic to the historic context of the surrounding heritage assets. It would fail to respect and conserve historic and positive existing relationships between the listed building and its surroundings and would cause harm to the setting of the listed buildings.
“The proposal would also cause harm to the setting of the Lord Street Conservation Area. While the benefits of the proposal would not outweigh the harm caused.”
News in headlines
Alice 'will be happy' to see schoolfriends playing (BBC)
Three teens charged after robbery in town centre (Liverpool Echo)
Fletchers’ Family Farm stars Kelvin and Liz Fletcher announced as special guests at 2025 Southport Flower Show (Stand Up For Southport)
Thanks for reading this mid-week edition of The Southport Lead, I’ll be back in your inbox on Sunday morning. In the meantime if there’s anything you think I should be looking into then drop me a line southport@thelead.uk
Have a great rest of the week and if you’re in a position to support this newsletter then please consider a paid subscription.
Jamie & The Southport Lead team