Boss of company behind Northern Rail is given £250,000 pay rise despite disruption for thousands of passengers last year
- Manfred Rudhart, chief executive of Northern Rail’s owner Aviva, given pay rise
- Pay boosted from £1.08million to £1.34million last year despite major disruption
- Journeys were blighted by thousands of train cancellations last year
The company behind Northern Rail has handed its boss a £256,000 pay rise – despite the train line causing disruption for thousands of passengers last year.
Manfred Rudhart, chief executive of Northern Rail’s owner Arriva, saw his pay boosted from £1.08million to £1.34million last year.
He now earns 51 times the amount of the average Arriva employee.
Manfred Rudhart, chief executive of Northern Rail’s owner Arriva, saw his pay boosted from £1.08million to £1.34million last year
Dr Rudhart’s increased pay cheque will enrage Northern Rail users, whose journeys were blighted by thousands of train cancellations last year when the firm bungled a shake-up of its timetable (file image)
Dr Rudhart’s increased pay cheque will enrage Northern Rail users, whose journeys were blighted by thousands of train cancellations last year when the firm bungled a shake-up of its timetable.
Passenger complaints made to the operator tripled in the year to April 2019, to 44 per 100,000 journeys, according to the Office of Rail and Road.
Cancellations were caused by delays to track electrification work by Network Rail, which manages railway infrastructure. But Northern, which runs around 2,800 trains per day, then struggled to pull in drivers to work on weekends and put enough carriages on its trains to prevent further congestion.
Over June and July last year, 165 services every day to areas such as Liverpool and the Lake District were replaced with an ‘interim’ timetable.
The service was so poor that the mayors of Manchester and Liverpool, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram respectively, called for Northern to be stripped of the rail franchise. Mr Burnham said: ‘We have been extremely patient with Northern but enough is enough.
‘They promised us that things would be significantly better by May 2019 and that hasn’t happened.
Over June and July last year, 165 services every day to areas such as Liverpool and the Lake District were replaced with an ‘interim’ timetable (file image)
‘Train services across Greater Manchester and the North West remain unreliable and overcrowded.
‘Sunday services are still subject to widespread cancellation and promises of new rolling stock have not been kept.’
Yet Arriva still managed to bag a £282million taxpayer bailout in the form of subsidies for running the Northern Rail franchise.
Northern’s subsidy is supposed to go down every year, but after last year’s disaster, Arriva entered talks with the Government to renegotiate its terms. In accounts filed last week, Arriva also revealed that its owner – Germany’s state-backed rail operator Deutsche Bahn – had funnelled £44.7million out of the company in dividends last year, and another £47.5million in 2019.
This means that over the last two years, Deutsche Bahn has scooped more than £92million from the firm.
Deutsche Bahn bought Arriva in 2010 for £1.5billion, and last year was the first time it has taken money out of the company. But the German giant is now planning to sell Arriva – which has its headquarters in Sunderland – or possibly list it on the stock market.
Arriva declined to comment on Dr Rudhart’s pay.
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