MP attacks London Midland over poor service (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

London Midland's poor service is "not acceptable" says MP

2:19pm Wednesday 14th November 2012 in News By Mike Wright, Chief Reporter

Watford’s MP has branded the service London Midland trains is providing for rail passengers in the town "not acceptable".

Richard Harrington has said he is meeting bosses at the rail operator over the recent problems with the Abbey Flyer service between Watford and St Albans, which he said were having a "massive impact" on commuters.

London Midland has frequently cancelled the service between Watford Junction and St Albans Abbey Station recently citing a lack of staff. As a result commuters have been left to get a replacement bus service.

Mr Harrington said: "With so many residents of Watford relying on London Midland, these ongoing problems are having a massive impact.

"I have been very concerned with the scale of the problems particularly in the last few weeks. While I obviously appreciate that technical and mechanical failures can and do happen, a lot of the issues seen in the last week have been due to staff shortages and so forth.

"People in Watford are paying a lot of money to use London Midland trains and the level of service we have seen are not acceptable. I will be putting this case to the company and invite anyone in Watford who has experienced problems to get in touch so that I can raise it with them."

This week London Midland apologised to residents affected by the frequent cancellation of the Abbey Flyer service. However it urged passengers to keep an eye out for updates on the service to ensure they are not caught out by last minute changes.

Richard Brooks, commercial director at London Midland, said: "We apologise to all those passengers affected and thank them for their continued patience. Our driver shortage has been caused by a vacancy gap and we are working hard to resolve this.

“In the meantime, we will be ensuring we give passengers advance notice of any changes. We believe this will provide passengers with more certainty, enable better journey planning and improve the travel experience."