The UK’s rail services are set for a huge overhaul after the first train operators to be renationalised were named. But what does it mean for passenger services?
The first train operators were revealed in the ‘shake-up’ of the UK’s railways after the government passed a new law allowing it to bring the train firms back into public ownership.
It comes after three decades of private train company ownership in the UK.
The move is just months away for the first operators to be renationalised – South Western Railways is up for it in May, followed by C2C in July and Greater Anglia in the autumn of 2025.
But how did we get here and what does this mean for passengers?
What is happening to UK railways? Labour’s renationalisation plans explained
Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to solve the issues plaguing millions of train passengers across the country.
The renationalisation will not happen overnight. Instead, operators will be taken over when their contracts expire or reach a break.
As a first step towards the Labour’s wider plan to renationalise which the party promised in the general election, the government passed the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 on Thursday.
Next, the government is expected to set up Great British Railways (GBR), an arms-length body to take over private train companies’ service contracts when they end.
Heidi Alexander, the new Transport Secretary after Louise Haigh resigned last week, said the ‘complex’ privately owned system has ‘too often failed its users.’
For years, passengers have faced train delays while travelling.
The latest data from the rail watchdog the Office of Rail and Road shows that only 70.1% of 1.8 million journeys planned between April and June were on time.
As for the UK rail infrastructure currently maintained and owned by Network Rail, the plan is for the Great British Railways to take over running the tracks, most stations, signals, overhead wires, tunnels, bridges and level crossings.
However, the plan does not include the companies which own and rent out the trains themselves to operators known as Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs).
What does renationalisation mean?
The renationalisation plan means that the rail operating companies will be brought back under public ownership.
The move is called renationalisation because before 1994, rail services were publicly owned.
The government announcement has received a mixed reaction.
Mick Lynch, the RMT union’s general secretary, described it as a ‘signifcant step forward for passengers, rail workers and those who want to see an efficient rail system run for the public good, rather than private profit.’
But Andy Bagnall, the chief executive of Rail Partners representing the private operators, said that while the government ‘taking charge’ of fixing the railways is a ‘watershed moment,’ it has ‘parked the big decisions about how to do that until next year.’
Rail campaigners have welcomed the renationalisation update.
Johnbosco Nwogbo, the lead campaigner at We Own It, group against privatisation, said the government must go further to ‘serve passengers and taxpayers.’
He called for the government to take over the ROSCO companies as well, reopen closed-down routes such as the Dartmoor and Northumberland Lines and an elected passenger watchdog.
Some train operators have already been brought into public sector ownership – but for a different reason.
Southern, Northern, LNER and TransPennine Express were brought under the ownership of a Department for Transport-linked holdings company after poor performance when they were commercially owned.
LNER was taken over by the DfT company in 2018, Northern in 2020, Southeastern in 2021 and TransPennine Express in May last year.
The government has heralded the earlier privatisation of LNER and Southeastern. Ms Alexander said today that service punctuality and cancellation rate have improved since the DfT took over.
How much could it cost?
While the exact cost of the rationalisation plan has not been revealed yet, the Transport Secretary said it will be cheaper than the current system.
She said it would be a ‘fraction of the costs’ the government pays to private train companies in management fees which is around £150,000,000.
The government said the change would mean the cost of the fees would be spent on improving services rather than paid to private shareholders.
The costs would include bringing the operators into public ownership and setting up Great British Railways.
What is the impact on train tickets?
Many customers who have navigated the complex train ticketing system might be hopeful for cheaper and more straightforward fees.
However, this might not be the case after Ms Alexander revealed that train fares are still expected to go up even under public ownership. The focus will be on reducing cancellations.
She told BBC Breakfast today: ‘The primary aim of this is to improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellation, the waste and the inefficiency that we’ve seen over the last 30 years.
‘We’ve had private train operating companies running train services in this country over the last few decades, and it clearly hasn’t worked.’
A YouGov poll in July weeks after the general election found that 76% of Britons think that rail companies should be run publicly.
Who privatised the railways?
The privatisation of UK’s train services started in 1994 under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher’s successor, the Conservative Prime Minister John Major.
However, privatisation plans had already started in the early 1980s under Thatcher.
The privatisation – which was completed by 1997 – meant that passenger train operations were franchised to private companies.
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