It’s been an exciting time here at Virgin Trains on the east coast as we move into the second year of the franchise.

We are fully into our £140 million investment programme, providing an amazing onboard experience for all our customers. Since March 2015, we’ve already invested £45 million. This year alone, we’ve refurbished our current fleet of trains, introduced a brand new menu created by TV Chef James Martin and launched our groundbreaking onboard entertainment app, BEAM, so customers can watch their favourite films and TV shows for free as they travel.  Plus we launched free on-board WiFi for our standard class customers and we’ve also invested in free customer WiFi at our stations.

We’ve also given our First Class Lounges a makeover, added hundreds of extra spaces in our car parks and started to roll out new, more user friendly ticket machines.

In May, we were delighted to introduce 42 new weekly services between London and Edinburgh, and a set of further new services mostly between Leeds and London this December. These extra services mean that we’re now offering 10,000 extra discounted advance tickets each week.

And in August we opened our new Customer Solutions Centre in Gosforth, bringing back in-house the team who provide assistance to customers via email, phone and Live Chat. The centre is also home to the team who assist customers with Group Travel and VIP bookings.  All part of our commitment to transform every element of our customers’ experience.

On top of this, this year we’re paying £70 million more to Government than Directly Operated Railways paid when the franchise was in public ownership.

But, we’ve only just started! We’ve got even more planned for next year as we gear up for the launch of the Azuma in 2018, which will see even more services on the East Coast, built here in the UK by Hitachi.

I’d like to thank you for all your feedback and support in the last year – stakeholder engagement is always valued at Virgin Trains, as it helps to make our services even better. Finally, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year and I very much look forward to working with you in 2017!