The changes announced by GTR to services from East Grinstead from 21st May include an additional service which will depart East Grinstead at 10:36 and a new 09:20 departure from London Victoria towards East Grinstead are extremely positive and I am hopeful that reallocating resources to the weekday service will result in more regular and reliable services for those who rely on them to get into work.
In the evening, an additional service will depart London Victoria at 22:50. This additional service will mean there is now a half-hourly late-night service between 21:50 and the last train at 23:22.
Even with these changes, trains from East Grinstead are still not running as frequently as they did before COVID and although I appreciate passenger demand has changed, as I keep reiterating, unless GTR provide the services people require, they will not be able to assess true demand. Pre COVID there were four services per hour from East Grinstead into the City whereas now, at off peak times, one train runs per hour. This is simply unacceptable as a commuter town less than 30 miles from the capital.
I have been made aware of a number of issues with services from East Grinstead this month, which I have raised with both the Rail Minister and the CEO of GTR.
- 6th March: Three consecutive Thameslink services were cancelled at East Grinstead (18.18 to Bedford, 18.48 to West Hampstead and the 19.18 to London Bridge) along with the three corresponding inbound services
- 7th March: 07.14 to Bedford only had eight carriages
- 8th March: 07.14 to Bedford terminated at East Croydon and 07.44 to Bedford via London Bridge was cancelled due to signal problems.
- 15th March: 07.14 cancelled from East Grinstead-it started from Oxted due to overrunning engineering works. I understand that very little notice was given of this cancellation and that this train was still showing as running early that morning as commuters left their homes.
- 17th March: The first train from East Grinstead to London Victoria departed at 07.36 and there was no Thameslink service this morning.
- 18th March: trains from East Grinstead terminated at London Bridge
- 23rd March: 07.14 cancelled and 07.36 to Victoria cancelled. I also understand that the ticket office at East Grinstead was closed for part of the morning.
- 24th March: 06.44 service to Bedford via London Bridge was cancelled
- 26th March: 19.42 service to London Victoria was cancelled due to points failure
- 27th March: 07.14 was cancelled due to a problem at the depot
- 28th March: 07.14 only had eight carriages
I will continue to keep constituents updated on this and appreciate receiving details of individual’s experiences to continue to take up with GTR.
Please keep me updated by emailing in to mims.davies.mp@parliament.uk