It's very interesting to read that monitoring of short formed trains for franchise purposes has been only based on around 10% of (predetermined) services.   It therefore would have allowed the operator to ensure that any reductions would be on services which would not be monitoried for the purposes of sanctions against them, allowing quite  a serious amount of underprovision / underperformance.

Having said that, the statements that monitoring are of key services at peak times into major urban centres does at least point to some of the more critical services being monitored, and there is probably some sense and practicallity in that.

The FOI relates to Northern Rail.

In our own area, I note that the 17:02 Worcester to Southampton has been reduced from 2 to 1 carriage (at least part of the way) for the last two evenings, and (at present, because of naff round journey possibilities) there's no huge harm in that on the Swindon to Westbury leg at least.  Yesterday, the 16:55 Abbey Wood to Westbury was also just a single carriage, and I suspect that might have had rather more serious consequences.

Where we're looking at routine, regular short forms (how many of the 8 diagrams on Cardiff - Portmouth will be short TODAY?) there is concern, but I am not - at current traffic levels - going to grumble at the shortening of a TransWilts service from time to time, even quite often.  Unless it is shortened to zero carriages, which is one step too far!