Pay package for Charles Horton, chief of parent firm Govia Thameslink, comes despite year of misery on troubled network

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The man in charge of Southern rail, the train network that has become synonymous with delays, cancellations and strike action, was paid £495,000 last year.

The deal awarded to Charles Horton, chief executive of Southern’s parent firm Govia Thameslink (GTR), drew fire from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers (RMT) and the Labour party.

Horton was paid £478,000 by GTR and also received a further £17,000 in pay from a former division of the group, Southern Railway Limited, taking his total to nearly half a million pounds.

In the previous year, due to a rearrangement of the company’s corporate structure, he was paid by both Southern and GTR, earning a total of £493,000.

Horton’s pay remained broadly flat despite a year of misery for 300,000 passengers on the Southern network, which was ranked the worst in Britain last summer.

Nearly a third of its trains were late in 2016 as it wrestled with a prolonged labour dispute that descended into ongoing strike action, as unions battled planned changes to the role of conductors.



Horton was awarded the pay packet despite Govia Thameslink reporting a pre-tax loss of more than £15m on turnover of £1.1bn for the year ending 2 July 2016, according to accounts filed at Companies House.

A spokesman for the RMT lashed out at what he called “telephone number pay” that “shows a real sense of twisted priorities”.

“On one hand, senior management are scooping up huge sums of money, whilst on the other hand, the guards are being systematically undermined and set up for abuse for having the audacity to fight for passenger safety,” the spokesman said.

“You’ve got 400 guards on Southern Rail who have been fighting for a year for passenger safety and have had nothing but abuse and threats from the company. Back in the boardroom it’s help yourself, line your pockets.”

Andy McDonald, Labour’s transport spokesman, said the pay deal strengthened the party’s argument for renationalisation of the railways.

“With season ticket prices shooting up at a rate way above the average increase in earnings, those at the top of Southern’s parent company, Govia Thameslink, clearly have no shame in dishing out extraordinarily large pay packages to themselves,” he said. “The audacity with which train operating companies are extracting value from our railways is quite astonishing.

“A Labour government would bring the railways into public ownership as franchising agreements lapsed, a policy which has wide support right across the country. Accordingly, under Labour the railways would be run in the public sector, in the best interests of taxpayers and passengers alike.”

David Brown, the chief executive of Go-Ahead, the parent company of Govia Thameslink, refused an annual bonus and pay increase in September given the disruption on the network.

Go-Ahead’s annual report states: “The directors’ remuneration policy is designed to reflect the group’s performance, with elements of remuneration linked to our strategic priorities, particularly health and safety, customer satisfaction, and operating profit and cashflow.”



Southern Rail said that it ran 95% of services on time during the latest RMT strike on Saturday, after 55% of conductors and “on-board supervisors” showed up for work.

GTR, which also owns Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express, declined to comment on pay.

• This article was amended on Monday 10 April to make clear that Charles Horton’s £495,000 pay package was broadly the same as the previous year, and had not nearly doubled, as reported earlier.