St Albans City and District Council’s Scrutiny Committee* has invited First Capital Connect to attend a Scrutiny meeting starting at 7pm on Wednesday 13 July, which will focus mainly on the quality of their passenger information and other key customer concerns.
Councillor Robert Donald, Chair of Scrutiny has invited First Capital Connect and Network Rail to send representatives along. First Capital Connect’s Managing Director Neal Lawson and Integration and Partnership Manager Larry Heyman, accompanied by Martin Frobisher, Route Director, East Midlands for Network Rail will attend.
Local residents are invited to submit questions for councillors to put to First Capital Connect by the deadline of Friday 24 June. This will allow time for responses to be prepared and these will be presented at the meeting on 13 July. For this reason, new questions will not be accepted during the meeting. Questions should be sent via e-mail to scrutiny@stalbans.gov.uk, or via post to:-
Scrutiny Support Officer
St Albans City and District Council
Civic Centre
St Peters Street
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL1 3JE
If you have any queries on this topic please contact the Scrutiny Support Officer on 01727 819529.
Councillor Robert Donald, Chair of Scrutiny commented: “This is a welcome opportunity for elected representatives to raise concerns, especially about First Capital Connect’s recent poor performance and communication on behalf of many residents who commute to London daily. I want to hear what steps are being taken to improve both performance and communication immediately, because this is far from the first time St Albans and Harpenden commuters have suffered in this way – remember the problems caused by snow just before Christmas and overtime working in the new contract to name two in the last 12 months. If the senior company executives attending the meeting fail to convince the committee that communication with the public will improve very shortly, I will seek their approval for an all party scrutiny group to meet the Transport Minister Norman Baker, to discuss revoking First Capital Connect’s franchise.”
This meeting will be an opportunity to hear from First Capital Connect about progress and to raise any other concerns.
Problems relating to the communication of service information to customers have been a keen concern to local residents. In December 2010 First Capital Connect attended a Scrutiny Committee meeting where communication during the severe weather had been a topic of discussion. A full copy of First Capital Connect’s presentation and details of this meeting can be seen on the Council’s website: “Scrutiny’s update on First Capital Connect” 3 December 2010. http://www.stalbans.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/press-room/items/2010/December-2010/ScrutinysupdateonFirstCapitalConnect.aspx#0.