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Virgin Rail will run the West Coast mainline for a further 23 months, the government has announced. |
Richard Branson’s firm has been given the right to run trains from London to Glasgow until November 9 2014, without the competition for a short-term interim franchise that the Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, promised when FirstGroup’s award was scrapped in October.
Instead of the three-stage process, Virgin will continue to run the service until another long-term franchise can be awarded.
The deal, coming only three days before Virgin’s 15-year franchise was due to expire, is believed to have been held up by legal concerns over EU procurement rules and the potential for further lawsuits from rival bidders.
McLoughlin said: “We are determined to ensure not only that passengers continue to experience the same levels of service they have in the past, but that services improve.
“There will be a new hourly service linking Glasgow and London and we will also work with Virgin Trains to explore other service improvements.”
He went on: “I am also extremely pleased that passengers will benefit from up to 28,000 more seats daily thanks to the delivery of 106 new Pendolino carriages on to the West Coast line which has happened on budget and ahead of schedule.”
The government also announced yesterday that the department for transport (DfT) would be able to shorten the 23-month period “by up to six months if a subsequent franchise can be let on a shorter timescale”.
Virgin had high hopes of extending its long tenure on West Coast when bids were invited for a new 13-year franchise which was due to start on December 9 this year. But in August the DfT announced the new franchise had gone not to Virgin but to rival transport company FirstGroup.
It was only after Branson, who had branded the bidding process “insane”, mounted a legal challenge to the decision that McLoughlin scrapped the bidding process, saying there had been mistakes by the DfT.
Three DfT officials were suspended and negotiations were started with a view to getting Virgin to run the line for between nine and 13 months before a short interim franchise was offered followed by a longer one later.
Yesterday’s news means the government has altered its plans for the immediate future of the line, in that the Virgin temporary deal is for far longer and there will be no interim franchise before the long-term one is introduced.
When he pulled the plug on the West Coast franchise bidding, McLoughlin appointed businessman Sam Laidlaw to produce an independent report into the fiasco.