I was aware that the stipulations were provided in the franchised, but not aware they had been changed.  Under what conditions can a TOC with a management contract not manage to provide an alternative?

6.2 The Operator shall use all reasonable endeavours to provide or secure the provision of alternative transport arrangements to enable passengers affected by any disruption referred to in paragraph 6.1 to complete their intended journeys in accordance with this paragraph 6.2. In particular, the Operator shall use all reasonable endeavours to:

(a) ensure that such alternative transport arrangements are of reasonable quality, of a reasonably similar frequency to the Passenger Services included in the Timetable which such arrangements replace and fit for the purpose of the journey to be undertaken;

(b) transport passengers to, or as near as practicable to, the end of their intended journey on such Passenger Services, having particular regard to the needs of any Disabled Persons and, where appropriate, making additional arrangements for such Disabled Persons to complete their intended journey;

(c) provide adequate and prominent publicity of such alternative transport arrangements in advance, subject, in the case of unplanned disruption, to the Operator having sufficient notice of such disruption to enable it to provide such publicity;

(d) provide sufficient alternative transport capacity for the reasonably foreseeable demand for the disrupted Passenger Services; and

(e) ensure, if any planned disruption overruns, that there is a reasonable contingency arrangement for such alternative transport arrangements to continue for the duration of such overrun.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze1l76lkp4o

One has to ask: "why didn't they.......................

I can correct that - on average, I use PA at least once a week, often more. I've been wheelchair-bound now for exactly two years. It has *never* yet let me down.

Worst case - I had a 90second wait for platform staff with a ramp when the departure staff listed me at the wrong end of a 5car voyager.

People don't understand how it all works, and better instructional info is required. However, some well-known persons do deliberately make waves by deliberately missing steps out when using it. But of course, it's not an RAIB issue, so no one hears the actual truth of any story.

Labour blunder will cost taxpayers £250m extra to nationalise rail firm

Labour’s nationalisation of a major train company will cost taxpayers an extra £250 million after a blunder by civil servants, The Telegraph can reveal.

South Western Railway (SWR), which serves London and a large swathe of southern England, will be operated by the Government from May 25.

However, a negotiating error by the Department for Transport (DfT) means taxpayers must spend an extra £50 million a year to lease SWR trains after that date.

Passengers could be told to pay higher ticket prices to offset some of the increased cost, even though public subsidy for the railways stood at £12.5 billion last year.

At the centre of the blunder is the fact that, as is the case with almost all government-franchised operators, SWR does not own its trains. All its rolling stock is leased from companies known as Roscos.

Operators preparing to take over a rail franchise typically start negotiating with Roscos over prices for trains about 18 months in advance of their start date, said industry sources.

Even though DfT itself set SWR’s franchise end date as May 25 and published this on its government website, civil servants did not start negotiating with SWR’s Roscos until Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, announced in December that the operation would be nationalised.

This decision to leave talks to the last-minute meant that DfT gave itself just a third of the normal time needed to put together a deal.

The result of DfT’s short-notice negotiation, together with civil servants’ insistence that the lease could only last for five years, was an extra £50 million a year on the price of the trains, totalling £250 million.

Angel Trains, Porterbrook and Rock Rail – the Roscos supplying SWR – each raised their prices by between 10 and 20 per cent as a result of the increased risk from an unusually short contract, insiders said.

“There’s sod all, basically, that the Government can do about that because it’s now far too late to do anything different,” one added.

The one-sided offer came about because DfT had forgotten that it could not simply roll over SWR’s existing contracts, an insider claimed – although a Government source insisted that civil servants could not start negotiating until the rail nationalisation bill received Royal Assent in December.

Previously, DfT has taken over failing private rail operators such as Northern and LNER. All of those takeovers occurred in the middle of the franchise, meaning existing deals stayed in place.

Britain is already tightening its belt because of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, which threaten the spending plans of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and could potentially trigger further tax rises.

Amid the global economic uncertainty, the Tories warned that the taxpayer could not afford Labour’s flagship rail nationalisation plans, with another nine train companies set to follow SWR into state ownership over the next three years.

Jerome Mayhew, the Conservative shadow transport minister, said: “Labour’s pandering to the rail unions’ demand for full nationalisation is already costing the taxpayer dear.

“The Government was warned that their plans were wrong-headed but they refused to listen to anyone but their union funders.”

Labour promised in its general election manifesto that it could nationalise train companies “without costing taxpayers a penny in compensation”.

Competition investigation
In March the Office of Rail and Road said it was reopening a 2020 investigation into choice and competition in the rolling stock market, over fears that Roscos were charging too much and failing to compete properly against each other.

Rock Rail, which owns the controversial £1 billion Arterio train fleet, whose entry into SWR service has been delayed partly because of trade union objections to the size of its windscreen wiper, did not respond to a request for comment.

Angel Trains, owner of the 750-carriage Siemens Desiro fleet operated by SWR, declined to comment and said its negotiations with DfT were commercially confidential.

Porterbrook, which owns a minority of SWR’s trains, declined to comment for the same reason.

A government source said: “This Government is taking the railways back into public ownership at the lowest reasonable cost to the taxpayer, so we can get on with making the long-overdue improvements needed to make day-to-day journeys easier.

“Negotiations like these take two and a half years on average, and so should have been started by the previous Conservative government in 2023, whether the railways were being taken into public ownership or not.

“This is the long tail of Tory incompetence, which continues to fail passengers, even when they are not in power.

They added: “The only alternative available to this Government would have been to buy the current operator out of the contract, a few months before it lapsed anyway – but this would have incurred the same rolling stock renewal costs next month, in addition to millions of pounds worth of compensation paid to the outgoing operator.”

The survey closes on Sunday 23 March, at 5pm.

Hmm - I think 'Rammed' = 110% plus....so full & standing

Everything changed on the move to management contracts. They aren't franchise agreements, to which you refer

A light aircraft has crashed into a holiday park, emergency services have said.

Police were called at 14.23 BST to a report that a light aircraft had crashed in Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park, near Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight.

The plane had two people on board, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said.

The fire service said two people suffered minor injuries in the incident. Firefighters from Newport and Ryde were dispatched shortly before 14:30.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service said crews found the aircraft "had suffered extensive damage from the impact and subsequent fire". It said: "All occupants had safely exited the aircraft before emergency services arrived. Two individuals sustained minor injuries and were treated by paramedics at the scene."

An ambulance plane attended and no patients were taken to hospital, Isle of Wight NHS Trust confirmed.

Hampshire police said the holiday park remained open and no roads had been closed.

Your view varies to mine. I went to the cafe at Yatton. Getting over that damn bridge in a manual wheelchair practically killed my effort & had to return to the cafe & ask to be pushed over. That station is NOT accessible for a manual wheelchair & it ought to say so somewhere!!

Station Accessibility

Step-free access

Step-free access to all platforms - may include long or steep ramps. Access between platforms may be via the street.

Step Free Category B1 Station - Step free access is available to both platforms although step free between platforms involves using local pavements and road bridge.

Like so many things in life, you’re more likely to hear about the one time something goes wrong than the many times something goes right.

It is already done at Nailsea & Backwell, in the sense that passengers with mobility issues travelling westwards don't alight from the train on platform 1 at NLS but stay aboard until the next station, Yatton.  There, they can alight and cross over to the other platform to get a return train to NLS and alight onto platform 2 there, to access our one ramp.

Yes, it's an absolute faff, as they need to negotiate their way up the car park incline, cross the road overbridge and negotiate down the opposite car park incline at Yatton - but it is just about do-able.