Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information her Department holds on the principal causes of continued short-formed rail services; whether her Department has modelled rolling stock availability over the next five years; what assessment her Department has made of the impact of (a) infrastructure and (b) maintenance constraints on rolling stock availability; and whether she plans to publish her Department’s long-term fleet planning assumptions.

The Department does not collect information on the principal causes of short-formed rail services and has not undertaken separate modelling of rolling stock availability. Train operators are responsible for service delivery and are best placed to identify the immediate causes of short formations, which can arise for a range of operational reasons, including rolling stock availability and maintenance. In some circumstances, operating a short-formed service may be preferable to cancelling a service altogether to maintain service frequency.

DfT Operator Limited, the Government’s rail owning group for its public ownership programme, works closely with train operators and industry partners on future rolling stock requirements and their implications for capacity. The Government is developing a long-term rolling stock and infrastructure strategy for the railway, which we expect to publish later this year. This will include Great British Railways' expected future rolling stock requirements.