UK Railways- The Fines Culture.

While the State has successfully in effect sued itself for negligence over the Hatfield crash and now has to pay itself a £5 million fine thereby relieving itself of this amount for investment in additional safety measures, the Department for Transport,-DfT for short,-which too often sits as a micromanager upon the shoulders of the franchised rail operating companies,- seems bent on fining one of the best performing and most customer orientated of them, Chiltern Railways, for comparatively minor transgressions and delays in completing projects.

According to Today's Railways, the Department agrees that "the effects on passengers may be considered minor" Chiltern accepts that "..in 2009 there were four technical breaches of the franchise agreement;none of which had significant consequences for our passengers or incurred cost to the taxpayer" but points out that the four comprised late delivery of a small number of customer improvements. They go on to note that since these, the longest of which was 16 weeks, they have delivered £7.25 million of station and car park improvements and this month will be introducing four new 2 coach trains at a cost of £1.25 million per carriage (yes, these have become expensive).

To be proposing to remove £ 500,000 from the Chiltern pot for further improvements can only be seen as D(a)fT just as the court's fining Network Rail £5 million rather than insisting instead that they invest this amount in hitherto unannounced,- ie bonus,- safety or service improvements looks counterproductive and a wasted opportunity to at least achieve something positive other than "lessons learned" from the Hatfield fatalities. If Chiltern were a poor performer there might be some point in their fine, but they are not. They are probably the best, which is in no small part due to their uniquely long franchise which continues until nearly the end of 2021, another lesson which DfT seem unwilling to learn.Hopefully they will see sense before dipping their hands into Chiltern's pocket. Maybe they have a budget defecit problem to cover? Might not cutting a few micromanagment positions be a better bet?