Anglia to spend £1.5 million on service improvements

Abellio Greater Anglia will spend an additional £1.5 million to improve fleet and service reliability. This is on top of £30m worth of work announced in April and November.

The work includes reliability modifications on Class 315, ‘317’ and ‘321’ electric multiple units, more overnight door maintenance and repair resources at Colchester, Southend, Orient Way, Chingford and Cambridge which will tackle door failures, modifications and upgrades to the electrical and mechanical systems on the ‘315’, ‘317’ and ‘321’ fleets, and enhancements to the Class 90s.

AGA will also improve the facilities for wheelset and traction motor changes, while additional resources will be provided to strengthen the round the clock technical support. Four engineers and technical staff will be recruited while 14 extra cleaning staff will be recruited.

The work will start immediately and be delivered over the next six months.

The company said in a statement: “Although Abellio Greater Anglia's annual punctuality results place it 10th out of the 22 UK train operators (with an annual average of 90.7% against a national average of 89.3%), the last few weeks have not been good enough. The autumn is traditionally a more difficult period for UK train performance, but this year has been especially problematic - primarily due to infrastructure faults such as track, signalling and overhead line problems, plus an increase in problems due to weather-related disruption and an increase of over 50% in the number of fatality incidents (suicides) compared to 2013.  In addition, there have been Abellio Greater Anglia’s own train faults, plus freight companies’ train faults.”