Congleton has been without a Sunday train service for over a year. The lack of Sunday trains makes weekend trips from our local station of Congleton all but impossible. For a town the size of Congleton, which is rapidly expanding, the lack of a full 7 day per week timetable is not an acceptable level of service.

On Sundays, there are just six rail replacement buses each way between Stoke and Manchester stopping at Congleton. The bus replacements are worse than useless, given they take at least twice as long to get anywhere, often run late and occasionally don’t turn up at all.  

The train operator, Northern Trains, is owned by the Department for Transport and has been operating on this line since 2020. The lack of a Sunday service for Congleton is partly as a consequence of Northern Trains failing to reach agreement with the RMT Union to include Sundays as part of the working week. However, this does not explain why other routes using the same rolling stock and crew diagrams enjoy a better Sunday service than Congleton, despite the other lines carrying many fewer passengers than Congleton.

House building in the Congleton area has seen significant population growth with a local population now totalling about 30,000. Congleton station has about 300,000 passengers per year and 25.5 passengers per train call. Apart from Knutsford, Congleton has significantly greater passenger usage and a much higher number of passengers per train call than all the other local Northern Train only stations. Stations with similar usage figures to Congleton all have at least an hourly Sunday service with many having multiple trains per hour. 

This unacceptable failure by Northern Trains to provide a Sunday train service has continued for far too long.

Therefore, we demand that the Department for Transport and the independent regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, require that a Sunday train service of at least six trains each way between Stoke and Manchester be immediately provided for Congleton by :

1.    A more equitable share of the Northern train crew resource so that a basic Sunday service is restored for Congleton.

And in addition,

2.    At least in the interim, for certain CrossCountry trains to make an additional stop at Congleton throughout the day on Sundays causing the passengers on those trains little inconvenience while at the same time increasing passenger numbers on our train network. 

And finally,

3.    To confirm and commit to a date when a sufficiently robust 7 day timetable will resume for Congleton.