David Simpson Slide Presentation
at 2022 AGM & Conference

Due to a family emergency while David was travelling to Dingwall he had to return home. Fortunately he had sent the slides in advance, so he sent these notes to accompany them.

Slide 2

• 160+ driver trainees had training paused – if they had completed training to schedule we would have sufficient qualified drivers now to run the full timetable without reliance on rest days and overtime.
• We changed the timetable 14 times through the two years of the pandemic.
• Scotland at 75% recovery from latest ORR figures, GB around 80%. Friday and Saturday are our busiest days now by some margin.

Slide 3

• Self explanatory

Slide 4

• We’ll look for input from stakeholders such as FoFNL in respect of the new rural/scenic fleets.

Slide 5

• Self explanatory – we recognise recent performance hasn’t been good enough and are very focused on delivering improvement, though post-Carmont severe weather rules on emergency speed restrictions will continue to be factor.

Slide 6

• The last two bullet points are the ones I was going to stress, around the ability to plan long term [David had emphasised this in an earlier conversation with FoFNL], and really involving staff at all levels in decision making – this is something Chris Gibb, Scottish Rail Holdings CEO, has brought from his time as Chief Operating officer at Virgin Trains.

Slide 7

Latest updates are –

• ASLEF – recommending acceptance of the pay offer, with a referendum of drivers, results in on 11th July; that is the date at which we are hoping to reintroduce the full service, unless we see a return of drivers to working overtime and rest days before then (no sign yet).
• RMT/ScotRail – meetings next week of the RMT company council to decide their position on improved pay award, followed by consideration at their executive committee on 28 June, so we are not expecting any short term issues from that.
• RMT/Network Rail – no services on strike days, and very limited services on ‘in between’ strike days, mainly due to signalbox shift changeover times. The main reason is a low number of contingency signallers to operate signalboxes.