THE managing director of the new West Midlands franchise has been named.   Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde will take over on 10 December when the the new West Midlands franchise starts. He has been at Merseyrail since 2015, a period in which plans for new trains took shape and services were also repeatedly disrupted by industrial action over DOO.   Before he joined Merseyrail, Jan spent three years as Abellio UK’s deputy managing director.   He has also been operations director at South West Trains, commercial director at Southern and operations and retail director at Thameslink. He first joined British Rail in 1989 as a management trainee.   Merseyrail’s new managing director will be Jan’s former deputy, Andy Heath. Andy first joined Merseyrail as trains manager in 1998 and has been operations director since 2005.    Ougoing London Midland managing director Patrick Verwer will be moving on. Abellio said he made this decision before the announcement of the franchise award, and that he leaves with the best wishes of West Midlands Trains.   Jan Chaudhry-Van der Velde said: “It’s a real honour to take on this role at such an exciting time for the West Midlands. The near £1 billion of investment going into the network over the coming years will deliver significant improvements.   “Performance and customer satisfaction levels at Merseyrail were best in class during my time there, and I’m looking forward to delivering similar improvements at West Midlands Trains.”

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