NORTH LONDON LINE SUMMIT: COMING TOGETHER TO BOOST PERFORMANCE

Arriva Rail London (ARL), Network Rail and Alstom held a joint summit focused on the North London line on Wednesday 22 November, with the aim of delivering the best possible journey experience to passengers.

Although the London Overground is delivering high levels of reliability across the wider network, there have been challenges on the North London line, with the Time to 3 performance target regularly being missed.

To start reversing the trend and boosting performance, the summit featured a series of talks and workshops delivered by colleagues.

Delegates heard from colleagues who work on the frontline, including Matt Hayes, service delivery manager, who shared his experience of managing stations on the North London line, with real-life comments from passengers that once again brought home the impact of delays on the ground.

Speakers also gave details on the work of new joint delivery groups, which have been set up to allow teams at Network Rail and ARL to focus on investigating and tackling specific performance issues along the line.

The main workshop at the summit focused on six strategic themes: infrastructure capability, customer experience, fleet continuous improvement, external and community relations, operating plan resilience and 21st century operations. Under each theme, the groups discussed ideas and agreed practical steps that can be taken to drive down delays for passengers.

Before the end of the day, colleagues made personal commitments on the action they will take to improve performance.

Gunnar Lindahl, operations director for Arriva Rail London, said: "It was absolutely brilliant to come together with the team of dedicated professionals who lead every element of our North London line delivery every day. We have a burning platform to work together more closely than we have ever done before to bring better outcomes for our London Overground customers.”