The chaos on Avanti West Coast mainline cannot go on. The government are taking too long to remove them and find a decent operator. To make matters worse, the government handed Avanti more than £6.5m in 2021 for "operational performance" and "customer experience".

During some of that period, between July and September 2021, Avanti train services fell by 21.1% and its trains were punctual only 55.8% of the time. It also received 9,000 complaints over the same period, the highest of any train operator. 

As Mayor Andy Burnham said, “This is England’s most important railway line linking its biggest cities.” 

Avanti customer service also describe their service as follows (noticeably different to Virgin, the previous operator):

“Our main function is to link London with major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow with high speed and frequent trains.

So if you’re making a shorter journey, you might not be able to find an Avanti West Coast service to get you to where you want to go. This means that all or part of your journey will be served by another train company.”

The reality of this reduced and inflexible service is that it adversely affects disabled people, as well as many other travellers. There are barely any direct services from places like Milton Keynes, and one or two changes simply do not work for people with disabilities who cannot change platforms easily, or manage on old cross country trains that don’t even have seat reservations. 

The government need to act now and remove them, or provide a valid reason as to why we have to endure such a poor service going in to 2023.