Yes. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee.
As we sit here today, Scotland’s railway is in a much healthier position compared with the position that it was in when I appeared before the committee in March. Of course, it has not all been plain sailing and we have faced some difficult days but, overall, the direction is positive for track and train.
The completion of the driver and conductor training and the successful introduction of the new timetable in May continue to improve our reliability and provide more seats in key areas that were affected earlier this year, particularly Fife and the Borders.
We now have 64 of our 70 fantastic brand-new Hitachi trains in service, and we are much better prepared for extreme weather than ever before. Our investment to cope with hot weather paid off during the summer. Last summer, more than 1,000 trains missed their punctuality target due to hot weather. Using the same measure this year, that figure dropped to 200 trains.
However, the recent flooding—a month’s worth of rain fell in just three hours—caused significant disruption in the central belt and on the west Highland line. I am proud of the way in which all our staff across Scotland’s railway pulled together, their dedication and commitment, and their working around the clock to keep our customers moving and get the railway back open again.
Our improved performance has been reflected in the latest national rail passenger survey, which measured 85 per cent overall customer satisfaction with ScotRail.
That is all a step in the right direction, but we know that there is more to do. The £4 million investment that Abellio is making through the passenger satisfaction remedial plan will build on the progress that we have made in recent months. That is combined with Abellio’s £18 million investment in the train service performance remedial plan. We are therefore confident that we are beginning to deliver the service that our customers expect and deserve. Through the plan, we have launched a new WhatsApp service for our customers to make it even easier to get in touch with us.
Customers should experience a comfortable and clean journey. That is why we will undertake more frequent deep cleans to provide the high level of cleanliness that our customers expect.
We will also invest in new and improved devices for our front-line people to improve access to live disruption information so that we can keep our customers better informed when things go wrong.
We know that challenges remain. Despite an otherwise really strong performance during the Edinburgh festival fringe, we let our customers and colleagues down on the final weekend. We will, of course, share what we will do to minimise the risk of that happening again.
Overall, we are delivering more for our customers. Compared with the situation at the start of the ScotRail franchise, under Abellio, we deliver 115,000 more seats and 200 more services every day, and we employ 500 more staff—all for less subsidy. That is a strong record on which to build.