Union leaders in the North of England have called on strike-hit rail company Arriva Trains to "act in good faith".

The Trades Union Congress's (TUC) northern regional secretary Kevin Rowan says the dispute, which has seen 10 months of strikes by conductors employed by the firm, should be resolved.

Mr Rowan accuses Arriva of being content to allow services to decline.

But the company says it is doing its best to keep inconvenience to passengers at a minimum.

'Bad feeling'

Negotiations between the company and the RMT union, to which the conductors belong, have broken down on many occasions without any sign of agreement being reached.

Mr Rowan said: "Anyone approaching this dispute with a view to resolving it, would not make it increasingly difficult for the other side to take an agreement back to their members.

"Yet the company has offered the RMT less than the original offer that was made.

"And Arriva is causing bad feeling by not allowing people to work on their rest day, which was the arrangement before the dispute began.

"We now have an increasingly high number of trains being cancelled."

However the train company claims it has had as many as 75% of services running as normal during the series of 24 and 48-hour strikes.

'Improved performance'

Arriva also says its offer of a 4% pay rise plus 1.4% for productivity gains, and a 3% increase from next April, is better than deals accepted by the union at other train operators.

Ray Price, managing director of Arriva Trains Northern said: "We absolutely agree with the... TUC that this dispute could and should have been resolved some time ago."

He urged the TUC to encourage the RMT to "join us for meaningful discussions or to accept our invitation to involve the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas)".

Mr Price said the union was misinformed about the number of trains being cancelled, and said performance was steadily improving.