TransPennine Express loses contract over poor service

TransPennine Express will be nationalised after customer complaints of poor service and cancelled trains.

The government will now run the service which covers Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds in the north of England and runs to Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland.

Passengers will see no change to the service but the overall aim is to improve its performance.

In January and February about a quarter of its services were cancelled, which was the highest rate in the UK.

That improved to around one in six in March, but it was still the worst-performing train operator in terms of cancellations.

The Department for Transport said that TransPennine’s contract would not be renewed on 28 May.