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date 9 November 2003
source South Eastern Trains
type Press release

This Sunday 9 November, South Eastern Trains (SET) will take over the operation of South Eastern rail services from Connex.

South Eastern Trains today began issuing posters and leaflets informing passengers and confirming that the services operated, the validity of tickets and frontline staff will not change as a result of the transfer.

SET is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) and will operate the business until a private company is awarded the contract for the new 'Integrated Kent Franchise', planned to commence in early 2005.

The company's priority is to provide stability for passengers for the next year, whilst striving to improve the quality and reliability of the service and maintain the current high safety standards.

SET Managing Director, Michael Holden, said:

'My plan for the next twelve months is simple: to get it right, first time, more often. The only way it can be achieved is to focus the whole organisation tightly on the relentless, repetitive detail of our operation, day-in, day-out.'

ENDS


SET media briefing notes

South Eastern Trains is wholly owned by a subsidiary of the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) called South Eastern Trains Holdings (SETH). The Board of this company will provide strategic guidance and direction to SET, as well as funding and corporate governance. This arrangement is designed to enable SET to operate as a free-standing company in a similar way to other train operators.

South Eastern Trains takes over operation of the services at 2am on Sunday 9 November.


South Eastern Trains' objectives for the coming year are to:

Develop robust timetables that strengthen our ability to make trains run on time;
Present cleaner, more welcoming trains and stations;
Continue the introduction of brand new trains to replace old 'slam door' carriages;
Improve arrangements to manage service disruption when things go wrong;
Improve flows of information to stations about train running and service alterations;
Provide enough well trained and friendly staff to enable our planned service levels to be achieved.


South Eastern Trains run services in Kent, South London and parts of East Sussex.

The franchise has 182 stations and covers 773 km of track and employs around 3,000 staff.

Approximately 120,000 people commute into London on South Eastern trains in the weekday morning peak.

South Eastern Trains runs around 1,700 train services a day, 1,400 of these go into London.

South Eastern has 328 train units in passenger service.

Connex's franchise was placed on 6 months notice by the SRA on June 27 2003.

The SRA commenced its initial consultation on the Integrated Kent Franchise on October 20 2003.

Railhub Archive ::: 2003-11-09 SET-001