Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what penalties his Department imposes on rail operators who repeatedly use short-formed trains.

The franchise agreement between the Department and train operators include key performance benchmarks, including short formations. The Department monitors each train operator’s overall performance against these levels, and this includes regular meetings with their senior management where performance figures are scrutinised and challenged. There are a range of enforcement mechanisms available to the Department in the event of non-compliance.