CrossCountry announces cuts to services until November – with trial to reduce station calls at Chesterfield set to end in September

Train operator CrossCountry will introduce temporary resource-led reductions to its timetable from Saturday, August 10 until Saturday, November 9 – to address performance and reliability issues that have led to on-the-day cancellations.

CrossCountry has also confirmed that a trial which saw some station calls removed at Wakefield Westgate and Chesterfield will end as planned in September.

The operator said that prolonged industrial action across the rail industry has meant that they have not been able to deal with the backlog of critical training days required by train drivers accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic - when social distancing restricted training taking place.

Reducing services on some routes over a 13-week period - while bolstering services with extra carriages wherever possible – is intended to retain maximum passenger capacity on the CrossCountry network, while working through as much of the necessary driver training as possible.

The temporary timetable aims to reduce the number of on-the-day cancellations, which cause the most inconvenience to passengers. CrossCountry said that a similar approach was trialled over Easter which led to a 94% decrease in on-the-day cancellations.

By the end of the temporary timetable, CrossCountry will have more fully-trained drivers able to work across the network and will have reduced its training backlog – hoping to provide a more reliable service for customers with fewer cancellations.

There are no service alterations on the core CrossCountry route between Birmingham and Newcastle via Leeds. However, some services that operate via Doncaster will not run.

No CrossCountry services will operate beyond Edinburgh to Aberdeen or Glasgow while the timetable is in operation.

Ben Simkin, CrossCountry’s Regional Director for the North East and Scotland, said: “Removing services from our timetable is always a last resort. I’m sorry for the inconvenience this will cause for our customers and I want to thank them for their patience while these changes are in place.

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“This is a difficult decision, but by taking proactive action now we are investing in building a more resilient and dependable service for CrossCountry customers for the future.”