Background
In Session 4, the previous Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee had representatives from Scotrail Alliance appear regularly in front of the committee. The Session 5 Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee continued to receive written and oral updates from the Scotrail Alliance to be updated on rail network and rail service issues.
The Scotrail Alliance is a formal alliance between Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail designed to make the industry in Scotland more responsive to customers' needs. Both organisations remain separate companies, led by Scotland's Railways managing director Alex Hynes.
Network Rail runs, maintains and develops Britain's rail tracks, signalling, bridges, tunnels, level crossings and many key stations. Abellio ScotRail started operating on the Scotrail franchise on 1 April 2015. It provides passenger train services throughout Scotland with intercity, regional and suburban rail services across the Scottish national rail network.
Oral updates from Scotrail Alliance
On the 27 March 2019, the Committee took evidence from Scotrail Alliance following the Scottish Government issuing an official remedial order to Scotrail Alliance on its performance issues on 24 December 2018.
A further remedial order was issued on 8 February 2019 by the Scottish Government in relation to Scotrail's customer satisfaction. The Committee considered this during evidence on 4 September 2019.
Written correspondence from Scotrail Alliance
- Letter from Phil Verster, Managing Director of the Scotrail Alliance to the Committee regarding the initial response to the findings and recommendations of the Ernst and Young (EY) report into Scotland's major rail ehancement programme, 25 October 2016 (65KB pdf)
- Letter from Phil Verster, Managing Director of the Scotrail Aliiance to the Committee regarding his responses to follow up questions from his appearance before the Committee on the 21 September 2016, 8 November 2016 (1541KB pdf)
- Letter from David Dickson, Infrastructure Director, Network Rail to the Committee regarding a response to a follow up question from an appearance before the Committee on the 18 Janaury 2017 regarding timescales for work being undertaken on the Glasgow Queen Street redevelopment project, 28 March 2017 (134KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of the Scotrail Alliance to the Committee regarding his response to follow up questions from his appearance before the Committee on the 14 June 2017, 24 July 2017 (68KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of the Scotrail Alliance to the Committee regarding his response to follow up questions from his appearence before the Committee on 8 November 2017, 22 December 2017 (111KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of the Scotrail Alliance to the Committee regarding train service performance, 11 January 2018 (143KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of Scotrail Alliance to the Committee following up on questions from his appearance before the Committee on 9 May 2018 regarding a list of recommendations that Scotrail have shared with the Scottish Government for the use of the SQUIRE fund, 9 July 2018 (118KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of Scotrail Alliance to the Committee responding to follow up questions from his appearance before the Committee on 14 November 2018, 9 January 2019 (1622KB pdf)
- Letter from Alex Hynes, Managing Director of Scotrail Alliance to the Committee responding to follow up questions from his appearance before the Committee on 27 March 2019, 13 May 2019 (2319KB pdf)
- Letter from Scotrail to the Committee responding to a follow up question from the appearance before the Committee on 4 September relating to skip stopping, 12 September 2019 (432KB pdf)
- Letter from Paul McKay, External Relations Manager of Scotrail Alliance to the Convener which is an update from ScotRail regarding the latest SQUIRE improvements on 13 January 2020 (190 KB pdf)