Statement from Alison Forster, Managing Director of First Great Western

Alison Forster, Managing Director of First Great Western, said: “In view of the recent media coverage of our company I wanted to clarify the situation.

“Firstly I would like to apologise to our customers for not meeting their expectations. Our team has been working hard to implement measures to improve our services.

“It is clear that we underestimated demand for our train services and too much capacity was removed from the timetable we implemented in December. We have listened to our customers and increased capacity on the worst affected journeys and are now implementing measures which will further increase capacity.

“Since December these problems were compounded by difficulties with fleet availability and we have leased additional trains to meet timetable needs and will provide further trains to support our reliability recovery programme.

“In the last few days we have started to deliver the correct number of trains for our services. With the additional trains and with better reliability from our existing fleet we are already seeing an improvement. Our plans will enable this improvement to continue in the coming weeks.

”Following the additional timetable changes we made last week and with additional trains coming in to strengthen our services in the short term plus the refreshed High Speed Trains about to enter service creating new capacity on commuter flows into London, we believe we will greatly improve the match between available capacity and demand.

In summary therefore, changes we have recently implemented include:

1. A package of timetable changes which came into effect on 15 January. This package increased capacity on morning peak services from Oxford, Didcot, Maidenhead and Twyford to London and between Frome, West Wiltshire, Bath and Bristol.

2. We are investing £8m in a new maintenance facility in Bristol. Bringing the maintenance of our fleet in-house will be better for our customers. We have recruited additional staff, as well as using specialist contractors, to deliver a more reliable fleet of trains.

3. We are investing an additional £1m in the interior refurbishment programme for the West trains fleet taking the total spend to nearly £2m within the next 18 months. This will significantly improve the on-board environment and comfort for our customers.

4. FirstGroup have provided 11 Class 158 units from a sister company to help us to deliver improved services to customers more quickly.

5. We will lease additional units to further support the reliability recovery programme.

“We will continue to monitor all aspects of our operation and to react speedily where necessary to deliver an improved quality of service to our customers."

ENDS

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