Unions welcome daily trains call

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Rail unions have backed a call by the chief executive of Network Rail for trains to run every day of the year.

In an interview with The Times, Iain Coucher said railways should run "every single day of the week".

And he added that trains should also be made available "on Christmas Days and Boxing Days".

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT) said it supported increased services but that workers should be compensated.

Network Rail has already said it "let down" passengers when the engineering work overran over the New Year period.

Mr Coucher said the approach to track maintenance had to modernise to allow services to run every day throughout the year. You can't have a situation where you say to someone 'you're working Christmas Day and you're getting normal rate' RMT spokesman

"Because we've got such a huge demand for railway now, we need to do things differently," he said.

"We now need to run railways every single day of the week, we need to run them on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

"We have traditionally taken weekends and Bank Holidays to do engineering work, but we know that there is demand to use the railways 365 days a year so we've got to change what we do and how we do it."

'Adequate enhancement'

An RMT spokesman said any increase in service must be negotiated with the workforce.

"If people want to work on Christmas Day they should be able to, but there should be adequate enhancement for working on those days, same as on other bank holidays," he said.

"We would support this, but it has to be negotiated with the workforce - you can't have a situation where you say to someone 'you're working Christmas Day and you're getting normal rate'."

The Department for Transport said it acknowledged a desire for more consistent services across the week, but that the issue must be agreed upon by the rail operators and Network Rail.

Thousands of travellers had their journeys over the New Year period disrupted by work on the West Coast Main Line at Rugby and Nuneaton being delayed and London's Liverpool Street station also being shut for longer than planned.

A report published by Network Rail said it would use its own staff in future rather than relying on contractors.