Norman Wallis, owner of Southport Pleasureland, said: “We are a tourism destination, and basically, Northern [is] killing us.”
“Not just our business, but the hotels, the retailers, the restaurants. Everything in the town is being killed off, because we haven’t got the lifeblood, which is the people – they haven’t got an easy way to get into Southport,” he said.
“It’s extremely difficult, we can’t get the people in.”
The firm was brought under government control in 2020, but problems dogging the network continued.
In July, Northern Rail was issued a “breach notice” by the Department for Transport for cancelling too many trains, which required it to work on a plan to fix the problem.
The firm has said one of its main problems is train crew availability, pointing to high levels of sickness, and also that Sundays are outside contracted working hours.
Between 13 October and 9 November this year, fewer than half of its services ran on time.
Matt Rice, Northern’s chief operating officer, said the firm was “sorry for our recent performance, accept it has not been good enough and understand the impact this has on our customers”.
He added that Northern Rail was “working hard to address issues with traincrew availability so we can improve reliability for our customers”, including agreeing a new rest-day working agreement for train drivers.
It has also offered conductors a new deal to work on Sundays, he said, adding that the leadership of the RMT union will look at the offer before putting it to members for a vote.
“We realise there is more to be done to address issues with performance and are now focused on delivering our improvement plan,” Rice said.
