First Great Western
First Great Western is the operating name of First Greater Western Ltd, a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup, that serves Greater London, the South East, South West and West Midlands regions of England, and South Wales.
On 1 April 2006, First Great Western, First Great Western Link and Wessex Trains combined into the new Greater Western Franchise. First was announced as the operator of the combined franchise in December 2005 for a 10-year period.
First Great Western operates high speed services between London Paddington, Cotswolds, South Wales and the West Country, commuter services in London and the Thames Valley and local services in the south west of England. First Great Western operates 210 stations and its services call at over 270.
First Great Western operates a large diesel fleet. High speed services are operated by HST trains (British Rail class 43 Locomotives) with Mk3 coaches. Commuter services in the Thames Valley use Class 165 and Class 166 Turbo trains, while local services in the South West are operated with a variety of 2 and 3 car DMUs. Locomotive hauled trains are now in use on services between Cardiff, Bristol, Taunton and Paignton.
Management & Operations
First Great Western have three major depots: Old Oak Common, two miles from Paddington; Laira in Plymouth; and St Phillips Marsh, near Bristol Temple Meads, with smaller depots at Penzance, Landore and Exeter.
The current Managing Director of First Great Western is Mark Hopwood who replaced Andrew Haines in December 2008 (Andrew Haines was technically Chief Operating officer, as he was already First Group UK Rail Director and replaced Alison Forster in September 2007 after criticisms of the way the service was run). Other directors are Andy Mellors (Engineering), Sue Evans (Communications), Matthew Golton (Projects and Planning), Ben Caswell (Finance), Kevin Gale (Operations), and Neil Micklethwaite (Commercial Service and Commercial).
Until recently, the chairman was Charles Howeson who replaced Sir Chay Blyth in November 2007. Mr Howeson is formerly regional chairman of postal watchdog, Postwatch, and has a reputation as a consumer champion. Andrew Haines appointed three route directors under Performance Director, Mark Hopwood to focus the business on the reliability and punctuality of services, they are; Malcolm Drury (West Region), Tom Joyner (High Speed Services) and Ian Smith (East Region). Previous Managing Directors have included Alison Forster Chris Kinchin-Smith, Mike Carroll and Dr Mike Mitchell (now Director General of Railways at the Department for Transport).
In December 2008, Andrew Haines left the business following a short illness. He was succeeded as Managing Director by Mark Hopwood.
Performance
After being so for a long time, First Great Western is no longer the worst performing UK rail operator. The rail performance statistics for October to December 2009 show that in terms of Public Performance Measure (PPM), First Great Western achieved 90.0% up 0.7% on the same quarter the year before. The annual average for the 12 months to 31 December 2009 was 92.3%, also up on the previous year.
By May 2009, the company had seen an 8 point rise in its performance, which saw it move from the bottom of the industry performance table to the middle – one of the biggest improvements any Train company has made.
First Great Western were named as the worst TOC in a 2007 Passenger Focus survey.[citation needed] However, an Autumn 2008 survey found passengers were more happy with First Great Western than three other TOCs and two other operators were on a par with First Great Western.
First Great western admitted to misreporting the number of cancellations in the period from August to December 2007, with revised figures showing the company to have breached the cancellation threshold in the franchise contract. Specifically the company was alleged to have deliberately cancelled trains on the day prior to service without the prior approval of the Department for Transport, and without recording these cancellations on their performance figures. The company was also accused of falsifying records in order to claim dispensation for large numbers of cancellations.
Not all delays are attributable to First Great Western. In September 2007 the ORR defended its position to allow Network Rail an additional 2 months to fix infrastructure problems before imposing enforcement action and fines due to their performance. The ORR also stated that the First Great Western train service "continues to suffer from very high levels of delays attributed to Network Rail" and had described Network Rail's performance as being "exceptionally disappointing".
Poor performance is nothing new to First Great Western as in 1999 former subsidiary First North Western had performance figures dropping as low as 45% punctuality (90% target) partly due to insufficient rolling stock. That was then followed by lengthy industrial action by First North Western staff in 2000 with very few replacement buses.
The company consulted on a new timetable due to be introduced in December 2006. Campaigners accused the company of cutting evening commuter services, but First Great Western denied this.
In December 2006/January 2007 First Great Western were responsible for a great number of cancellations and delays each day, mainly attributed to shortages in train crew or a lack of serviceable trains, leaving some branch lines with just bus services, and some areas with little service at all.
From 1–10 January 2007 First Great Western removed all trains from the St Ives and Looe branch lines in Cornwall (which normally have a class 153 each in winter), so that they could use them for extending services around Bristol.
- From 2–5 January, First Great Western decided to shorten some of the local DMU fleet to try and cut down on the amount of cancellations and lack of serviceable trains.
- On 9 January 2007 First Great Western announced some timetable changes, in response to customer complaints about overcrowding on local trains.
- On 22 January commuters on the Bath-Bristol service staged a protest about overcrowding, issuing participants with imitation tickets printed with "Ticket type: standing only", "Class: cattle truck", "Destination: to hell and back", "Price: up 12%". The company threatened protestors with criminal prosecution and fines of £5,000, but staff failed to enforce ticket requirements.
- On 24 January, Alison Forster, First Great Western's Managing Director, apologised to its customers about its recent problems.[28] She has also prompted a debate in the House of Commons following the timetable changes.
First Group announced on 6 September 2007, changes to their management structure, apparently designed to strengthen the First Great Western commuter services. Anthony Smith, head of the rail users council, Passenger Focus, commented, "A fresh management approach is welcome. Clearly, looking at the passenger satisfaction scores for First Great Western, the train company and Network Rail have a lot to do. However, passengers will believe it when they see improvements."
In 2004–2005, 79.6% of trains arrived on time (defined as within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time). On 22 December 2006, First Great Western InterCity service was declared the worst in Britain for delays, according to figures from the Office of Rail Regulation, with more than one in four trains running late. First was also the only train company to achieve a year-on-year fall in performance results.
At the same time, Network Rail, the Infrastructure provider, has been heavily criticised by the rail regulator (the ORR) for their performance on Great Western Routes, being described as "exceptionally disappointing". In September 2007 they were given a further 2 months to improve performance before enforcement action and fines would be imposed.
In January 2008 another fare strike was held as a passenger group said that not enough improvements have been made, despite First Great Western announcing that 2008 season tickets and car parking charges would be frozen until the end of the year.
In February 2008 the Secretary of State for Transport stated that FGW had “fallen persistently short of customers’ expectations and been unacceptable to both passengers and government”. She issued First Great Western with a Breach Notice for misreporting cancellations and a Remedial Plan Notice as a result of exceptionally high levels of cancellations and low passenger satisfaction. As part of the Remedial Plan Notice First Great Western must achieve improvement milestones and specifically lease five more Class 150 units to allow three car trains to be used on Portsmouth-Cardiff services, undertake a much more extensive refurbishment of the Thames Turbo fleet, offer 50% higher compensation for the duration of the franchise, offer 500,000 more cheap tickets on off-peak services and improve station customer information systems. Failure to do this will result in FGW losing their franchise. First Group’s railway operating profit, meanwhile, was reported to have risen 10% in the six months to September 2007.
As of June 2009, FGW has transformed its performance to become one of the UK rail network's more puncutal operators, recording 94.6% of trains arriving at their destination on time.
In February 2010 FGW were named Train Operator of the Year at the national Rail Business awards. Presenting the award, judges said: “The joint efforts of colleagues across the company have seen First Great Western move from bottom of the industry performance league table to seventh place out of more than 19 train operators.”
Refurbishment
In 2005 First Great Western announced that the High Speed Train fleet was to be re-engined and refurbished. Upgrades included leather seats in First Class, redesigned toilets, a redesigned buffet and at-seat power points. After extensive research, FGW decided to opt for mainly airline seats (passengers liked the privacy, and did not like sitting next to three strangers). This also increased the number of seats per train. The refurbishment began in 2006 with the first set being released in January 2007, the programme was completed in February 2008, two months late. The refurbishment was carried out by Bombardier of Derby.
Also the 57/6 had bad reliability hits and where using Virgin Trains 57/3 but the 57/6 are now getting a refurbishment in to the blue (HST) livery and repairs.
A trial took place which involved removing buffet cars from three HST sets that were only used on London–Bristol/Cardiff/Exeter journeys to see if an improved performance was possible. several sets without buffets ended up on long distance services. Furthermore, no performance improvements were made. One of Andrew Haines' first decisions when he joined First Great Western was to scrap this plan.
The December 2007 timetable saw High Speed Trains introduced on shorter routes where they had never previously been used, to help boost the capacity. This introduced buffet cars to parts of the network that had never previously had them. The business looked at different ways it could provide buffet services on these services, and looked at whether a buffet car or more seats would be more appropriate.
In June 2008 it decided that all its High Speed Trains would have a buffet car, but that they would redesign some so they were smaller, allowing for extra seating if required in the future.
However, while the remaining buffet cars are being refreshed, a static trolley service is being provided Coach A or E – not at seat. After a trial in 2004, the powercars received new MTU engines, fitted by Brush Traction of Loughborough. The programme is now complete as the last power cars to be re-engined were released in April 2008.
As part of their Remedial Plan Notice, First Great Western have announced a much more thorough refurbishment of the Thames Turbo fleet than originally planned. The trains will have improved lighting, carpets, toilets and a revised seating layout. The trains have already been repainted into the dynamic lines livery.
First Great Western announced that it planned to "refresh" the part of its fleet that operates services between Portsmouth and Cardiff, and also services in the West Country, in an £11m investment programme.
The programme, which has now been completed, included fitting of reupholstered seats, new lighting and floor coverings, CCTV within the passenger saloons and facelifted toilets. At the same time, the exterior of the vehicles were repainted in the current FGW livery, including artwork depicting various local places of interest.
The refurbishment work was carried out at a number of locations. Class 158 vehicles were refurbished at Wabtec in Doncaster and fitted with a third additional carriage to supplement passenger capacity, Class 153 vehicles at Wabtec in Eastleigh and Class 150 vehicles at Pullman Rail's Cardiff Canton facility. The Class 143 vehicles were originally going to be refurbished at Pullman Rail but the contract was terminated and they were instead refurbished by Wabtec in Eastleigh.