Branson pockets £24million from rail firm: Virgin owner set for payout

• Sir Richard owns 51% of the route meaning he will receive a share of £47m
• Line generated profits of £66.8m in a year 

Virgin owner Sir Richard Branson is in line for a £24million payout from his company’s West Coast rail service.

Sir Richard owns 51 per cent of the route between Glasgow and London Euston, meaning he will receive a share of a £47million dividend. The rest goes to co-owner Stagecoach.

The line generated profits of £66.8million in the year to March.

Figures from the Office of Road and Rail show Virgin’s East and West Coast franchises generate more complaints that any rivals.

Passengers have criticised the company for its ‘Gestapo-like’ ticketing policy. Campaigners say travellers are forced to pay huge sums for a simple mistake when they have accidentally paid the wrong fare – something many blame on Virgin’s complicated pricing structure.

 The operator has also been criticised for expensive fares, with a standard single ‘anytime’ ticket for the four-and-a-half-hour journey from London to Glasgow priced on its website last night at £182.50.

However, the company has pointed to independent research by passenger watchdog Transport Focus showing it has the joint highest customer satisfaction levels of any long distance franchised train operator.  

Transport consultant Robert Flello, a former member of the Commons transport committee, said passengers would be ‘sickened’ by the payout for Sir Richard, 67, who is worth an estimated £4.9billion.

Mr Flello regularly travels on the West Coast mainline from his home in Stoke-on-Trent to London. He described the fares, which can cost more than £100, as ‘pretty poor value’.

Virgin Trains has pointed out the fact that it also receives the highest level of praise of any of the UK train operators. 

But Mr Flello said: ‘Branson built his empire by offering great customer service. Perhaps he should remember that when he is counting his £50 notes.

‘As a Virgin customer myself, I know many people will be sickened to think he is getting so much cash while we are getting such poor value for money.’ Mr Flello said standard return fares between Stoke and Euston cost ‘between £60 and £70’ even if bought weeks in advance.

Watchdog Transport Focus has raised concerns that Virgin’s hardline approach on ticket terms and conditions had resulted in a rise in the number of appeals against the rail firm in recent months.

The problems have been compounded by poor quality responses from the Virgin customer services team, Transport Focus said. Earlier this year Virgin promised to hire 25 more staff to handle passenger complaints on its West Coast franchise.

A spokesperson for Virgin Trains on the West Coast said: "We have a strong record of innovating for our customers and consistently top the long-distance franchise operators for passenger satisfaction, thanks to industry-leading initiatives such as automatic delay repay, m-tickets and our on-board entertainment system, Beam. We continue to focus on giving our customers the best deal possible and the recent launch of advance purchase tickets on the day could save them up to £15.5m a year. This investment in our services, both on our trains and at stations, has seen passenger numbers grow 6% in the last year. We also paid more than £230m to the Government and taxpayers."