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About a week ago I wrote to SouthEastern Railway's Public Affairs Manager, asking him two questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no. I didn't get a yes or no answer to either, and when I pushed for a straight answer to one of them the gentleman in question simply stopped replying to my emails. I'll publish the whole lot, names redacted, after the jump – but in summary:

A) SouthEastern Railway receives a huge subsidy from the Government in order to provide a rail service to the public. In January it failed to provide a proper service, slashing trains for three days, but it will not return an appropriate proportion of said subsidy. Nor will it donate the equivalent amount to charity, which is a shame – the DEC could undoubtedly use a few extra hundred thousand pounds right about now.

B) By cutting its service to an emergency timetable before a flake of snow had fallen, it seems* that SouthEastern ensured that its reliability would be measured against this reduced timetable. As this reliability statistic is used to calculate refunds, this gives it a fighting chance of avoiding the need to refund season ticket holders.

The downside, of course, is that many of its customers get left out in the snow, unable to use the train tickets they paid for. Fans of the absurd will note that the company has since published figures claiming 97.5% (Mainline) and 97.3% (Metro) reliability for the December to January period.

Or, to put it another way:

• The taxpayer pays SouthEastern via a £136m subsidy
• We, the customers, pay SouthEastern for our tickets
• SouthEastern decides not to run a service
• Most customers are left stranded
• Neither the taxpayer or the customer gets a refund

And it's important to note here that, under the National Rail Conditions of Carriage and the Passengers' Charter, this is all perfectly legal.

Evidently some kind of political action is required to ensure that this kind of debacle isn't repeated every time the weather forecast looks unpleasant, so I wrote to a few politicians: my MP, my AM and the Transport Minister.

My AM, Len Duvall, didn't reply – I received a response from his assistant promising a "considered response", but none came. My MP, Bridget Prentice, did contact the company on my behalf and put up with a flurry of CC'd emails from me, for which I'm thankful. As for the Transport Minister, like several people I received a response that in parts bore an uncanny similarity to the documents issued by SouthEastern itself. Nonetheless, it also said:

".. we will be conducting a review of the experience of the service that was provided between the 6th and 8th January 2010. This review will cover all aspects of service provision. Where any areas for improvement are identified, we will ensure that proper action is taken to deliver the required improvement.

Your email has also highlighted the difference between services provided across Sussex and Wessex despite simiar forecasts. We will be seeking understand (sic) from all parties involved the reasons for this. Until this review is complete, I cannot comment on how appropriate Southeastern's response was when compared to the actions taken by other operators."

So there's some hope for the future, and I await the findings of that review with interest. In the meantime, I'm sure our beloved Mayor will sort it out at the Emergency Rail Summit he promised to hold within a few weeks of his election.

* I say "seems to" because when asked whether this is the case the Public Affairs Manager stopped answering my emails. I've waited a week and re-sent the email, but to no avail. If he'd care to get back to me and assure me that this is not the case, I'll be happy to correct this immediately. In the meantime, a parliamentary answer from the 25th of January confirms that, unless SouthEastern should choose otherwise, this is the case.

For the sake of completeness, my full email conversation with SouthEastern is copied after the jump.

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