Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the new Abellio train franchise for the East Midlands will deliver improvements in (a) seat capacity, (b) fares and (c) connectivity north from Kettering.

The bid from Abellio included an increase in the frequency of services throughout the new Abellio East Midlands franchise, including an additional train per hour from Corby to London. There will be more trains operating throughout the week and services will start earlier in the morning and end later in the evening. The new franchise will deliver over 18,000 standard class seats in the peak for passengers at St Pancras, over 5,000 peak standard class seats at Lincoln – more than doubling capacity – and over 3,200 more peak standard class seats into and out of Nottingham.

There will be modern smart ticketing options for leisure and business journeys and for season tickets for commuters. Flexible ticket options will provide better value fares for regular passengers who travel less than five days a week and there will be enhanced Delay Repay compensation for passengers whose journeys are delayed by more than 15 minutes, compared to 30 minutes today. From December 2020, there will be more trains calling at Kettering going north compared to today and those train will have more seats