10 Performance on access scheduling, to the extent that LUL can control, shows an improving trend. In the period between April 2002 and September 2003, average late handover of the track by LUL to the Infracos fell from around 20 per cent to approximately 10 per cent. There was also a trend towards reduced variation around the average. Smoother handover led to LUL's financial payments to the Infracos falling from some £700,000 per month to just £50,000 per month over this 18 month period. LUL ascribe the reduction in late handover to the need to respond to such commercial incentives.
11 Overruns by Infracos into operational hours do occur and there may be increasing instances where, on balance, they elect to allow engineering work to overrun into operating hours and accept a deduction to the service charge due to the accumulation of Lost Customer Hours. In the first year of the PPPs, there were some 226 delays due to late surrender of the track by the Infracos. This represents an increase of approximately 20 per cent on the final year of shadow running, but only 0.15 per cent of total accepted requests for track access by the Infracos, of which there are some 140,000 per year. In most cases, engineering work overruns last less than 30 minutes (the average delay across all Infracos under the PPPs is 28 minutes), limiting disruption for passengers as the overruns do not directly interfere with rush hour operations. Such overruns do, however, disrupt LUL's start to the day with some knock-on effects during the rush hour.
12 More punctual handover of track by LUL and occasional requests for late engineering have meant more time for engineering work to be undertaken. There are numerous factors that influence the results of engineering work, but it is likely that more efficient use of night time engineering hours should result in improved fault response times and completion of routine work. On the other hand LUL reports a low utilisation of booked time and has concerns that low productivity, for example during weekend closures, may impact passengers adversely by leading to an increase in the number of closures at other times.