Northern a four-time winner at Rail Business Awards

Northern Rail's balanced approach to business improvement has been recognised with four top prizes at a national awards ceremony.

The train operator, owned by a joint venture of Serco and Abellio, won the top prize in four different business areas and was a finalist or highly commended in several more at the Rail Business Awards 2014 in London on 26 February.

Northern was the outright winner in the categories for Sustainability Excellence, Diversity and Inclusion, Security Excellence and the company award for Women in Rail.

In addition, two senior managers, Julia Wraithmell, District Maintenance Manager (East) and Natasha Wilding, Head of Stations, were two of the three finalists in the Rail Business Manager of the Year, with Natasha being Highly Commended.

The other categories in which Northern was a finalist or highly commended was Young Professional (for Samantha Dunn, Data and Information Manager); the individual award for Women in Rail for Julia and Natasha as well as the company award; Internal Communications; PR Campaign; Engineering Business Excellence; Train Operator of the Year and Rail Business of the Year. The judges commended Northern for being a very close runner-up in the Rail Business of the Year award.

Alex Hynes, Managing Director, Northern, said: "We use a balanced scorecard approach to our business planning and delivery to improve Northern for our customers, colleagues and stakeholders, and these awards are great external recognition that the Northern team is making very good progress.

"There is still more to do to deliver our vision of a railway the north can be proud of and this year we are delivering tangible improvements for millions of customers, including electric trains in the North-West, free WiFi on electric trains in West Yorkshire, and information screens at more than 100 stations that currently have no real-time information."

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