Winning the lottery would also be easier if one knew the winning numbers before buying the ticket …

In the Direct Award period 2014-2018 Southeastern committed to greater transparency. Part of this has been to publish monthly performance targets and actual figures by route.

However the targets are only published at the same time as the actual performance is also published. This has always raised the question of whether the targets are actually set in advance.

Now we know. For the 1-29 April (Period 1) figures the actual performance has now been published, but the Southeastern website states that target figures are coming “soon” and explicitly says (archived version):

“Please note that targets for Period 1 have not been finalised yet. “

It’s not clear how setting targets after the end of the period in question helps drive improvement in performance. But it should make meeting them much easier!