David Statham is leading the new FirstGroup TfL concession for London Overground, which started on 3 May. He was most recently commercial director for First Rail, and before that was managing director of Govia’s Southeastern until it was renationalised in 2021.

The RMT has claimed that Network Rail’s ‘Modernising Maintenance’ programme and reductions in staffing were the real cause of major disruption at Manchester Piccadilly after 400m of overhead wires on the station throat had been damaged earlier this month. Services at Piccadilly had to be suspended after a wire had broken on the morning of 16 April, and did not return in full until 11.00 on the 19th, after engineers had worked day and night to repair the damage.