Chamber and committees

Since September, the overall performance for the Borders Railway (as measured by the moving annual average PPM) has steadily improved, with latest figures showing an increase of 0.4% (now up to 85.8% PPM moving annual average).

Borders Railway specific performance improvement plan initiatives are currently underway with the plan to further bolster performance.

Abellio ScotRail’s financial information is commercially sensitive and can only be publicly released by Abellio ScotRail Ltd.

The Scottish Government has put in place a process to monitor the delivery of ScotRail's Performance Improvement Plan. This includes challenge to ScotRail on the progress made towards delivering the initiatives, assurance reviews and an analysis of progress reports provided.

The Performance Improvement Plan is set out into three key themes - Infrastructure, Fleet and Operations - with actions identified for these themes across all regions of Scotland. The plan contains the completion date for each of the actions and is not based on prioritising services.

ScotRail have accelerated £8m this year and committed an additional £8m post April 2017 to deliver the initiatives contained in the Performance Improvement Plan, along with £14m to improve Class 158 train reliability and upgrades to on-train facilities, at no additional cost to the Scottish Government.

Transport Scotland is responsible for preventing snow and ice endangering the safe passage of pedestrians and vehicles on trunk roads in Scotland. Significant planning is undertaken in advance of winter to ensure that the trunk road operating companies are prepared and to share lessons learned from previous years. The trunk road Operating Companies each have a Winter Service Plan, which is available online at:

http://www.transport.gov.scot/road/winter-service-ready-winter-and-severe-weather

The delivery and resilience of current winter communication procedures across Scotland were tested during one-day events on 18 and 20 October 2016, the principle being to share best practice. This involved representatives from our Operating Companies, Transport Scotland, Traffic Scotland, Police Scotland, local authorities and Transport Scotland’s Performance Audit Group (PAG).

Local authorities are responsible for winter service operations on local roads.

The ScotRail Alliance has confirmed that winter plans have been introduced and that they have access to sufficient stocks of salt. As in previous years, The Alliance will be running a series of winter roadshow events, commencing on 5 December 2016, at key stations to engage with the public.

Contingency plans are available in the event of stations not being treated when required, as required in their Franchise Agreement.

Further information is available online at: https://www.scotrail.co.uk/winter .

The number of complaints Abellio ScotRail receives each month, broken down by category of complaint is not held by the Scottish Government. As part of ScotRail’s four weekly Franchise Performance Report, details of ScotRail complaints per 100,000 passenger journeys has been provided covering Rail Industry Period 1 to 7 (2016-17). At Period 7, the Moving Annual Average (MAA) is 28.2 per 100,000 passenger journeys (0.03%).

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-04948 on 5 December 2016. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Scottish Government has put in place a process to monitor the delivery of ScotRail's Performance Improvement Plan and this includes challenging them on the progress being made towards delivering the initiatives set out in the plan to improve performance. As part of the monitoring process, Transport Scotland officials challenged ScotRail on the incident which occurred on 17 November to understand the root cause and lessons to be learned following the incident.

The incident blocked all lines outside Edinburgh Waverley during the busy morning peak. Since the incident ScotRail have taken measures to avoid the practice of trains crossing over all lines to reduce the possibility of such an incident occurring again.

The new fleet of class 385s are being manufactured by Hitachi with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, trading as Caledonian Rail Leasing, [CRL] funding the 70 trains in a deal worth around £370M.

Abellio ScotRail followed an OJEU (Official Journal of the EU) procurement exercise during its bidding process and entered into a commercial arrangement with [CRL] to lease the 234 new carriages until the end of its franchise term.

The Strategic Partnership Board, chaired by Transport Scotland, and comprising individuals from both within and outside the Scottish Government, last met on 28 September 2016 to discuss a variety of road safety issues with a particular focus on activity following the Road Safety Framework mid-term review.

The Scottish Government supports the general principle of driver education as an alternative to prosecution, where this is appropriate and is committed through Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2020 to consider if a Speed Awareness Course would make an effective contribution to road safety measures in Scotland.

Police Scotland are currently working with key road safety partners to develop potential options for the introduction of these courses. Partners include the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service as the approval of the Lord Advocate would be required before a speed awareness course could be introduced in Scotland.