Great Western franchise to run to 2024?

摘要

In its consultation document on the replacement Great Western franchise published on November 29, DfT provides an update on its plans for the current franchise which expires on March 31 2019. DfT observes that 'this is not an ideal time to plan for a potential change of franchisee as it falls in the middle of a major programme of change, which is scheduled to be completed by December 2019.' Reflecting this, the latest issue of DfT's franchising schedule published in July had already assumed that the 13-period extension in the current franchise agreement would be exercised. This would have seen the ITT for the replacement franchise issued in February 2019 with contract award at the end of that year.