Labor rail plan ‘will not fix delays’ as situation in the north under public authority becomes worse

The north’s biggest rail operator is doing worse than ever, four years after it came under government control, AND may reveal, raising concerns about Labor’s plans to repair the railways.

Northern, which operates around 2,500 services a day connecting cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle, canceled 140 trains a day last year despite being owned by the Department for Transport through an independent company called the Operator of Last Resort (OLR).

Flight cancellations became so severe that the government issued an “infringement notice” warning in June, although the move was not announced publicly.

The development has emboldened critics who believe Labour’s nationalization plan is not the answer to Britain’s beleaguered railway system.

Northern has been in public ownership since March 2020, after shipping giant Arriva was stripped of its franchise due to poor performance.

The previous Conservative government promised it would “stabilise performance and restore reliability for passengers”, but AND The analysis shows cancellations are about four times higher than in 2014, when the franchise was privately owned.

In 2023-24, Northern partially or fully canceled 51,204 trains, representing over 6% of planned services. The operator apologized for the disruption and blamed its poor performance on staff illness and poor availability on Sundays.

OLR is also responsible for three other railway companies – LNER, TransPennine Express and Southeastern.

In its latest reports, OLR said all four operators had had a “very challenging year” in terms of performance, with on-time performance and cancellations “adversely impacted by industrial action, extreme weather events, increased site incursions and infrastructure reliability challenges.” .

Grants worth more than £1.2 billion have been paid to companies, of which £648 million went to Northern.

Under Labour’s nationalization plans, OLR will gradually take ownership of the remaining ten operators as their contracts expire in the coming years. All passenger services and rail infrastructure currently operated by Network Rail will eventually be incorporated into the new public entity Great British Railways.

The government had considered whether to nationalize some well-known underperforming operators early, including Avanti West Coast, but had to take a step back after finding the company had not breached its contract. Financial Times. reported.

Speaking in the House of Commons earlier this month, Conservative shadow transport secretary Helen Whately raised concerns, arguing that OLR had had “mixed results” in managing four franchises and that asking it to take on another ten was a “huge risk”.

Andy Bagnall, chief executive of Rail Partners, which represents private operators, called the move “a political rather than a practical solution.”

He said AND: “Public and private operators face exactly the same problems in terms of industrial relations, reliability and infrastructure constraints.

“Simply changing train operators will not solve these problems, and in fact will likely become more costly over time.”

Johnbosco Nwogbo, chief rail campaigner at lobby group We Own It, admitted public ownership would not be a “panacea” for Britain’s railway problems.

“This is a really important first step because it’s important to align incentives in the rail system,” he said AND.

“It took private companies 30 years to create the mess we have now. It would be unrealistic to expect the government to flip a switch and fix it overnight.

“We think public ownership works, but they have to take care of it.”

Earlier this month it emerged that former Transport Secretary Mark Harper had quietly issued Northern a “notice of infringement” due to its poor performance.

This means that the operator is warned that it has breached or may breach the terms of the contract and must develop a plan to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Neither the government nor the Department of Transport has publicly announced any infringement notice Northern issued in June, just weeks before the general election.

AND understands that Northern bosses have already been employed by Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and have been told their level of performance is unacceptable.

Labor is confident it can push through significant reforms with rail unions and change outdated working practices by hiring more workers.

Although both Aslef and RMT unions have settled national wage disputes in recent weeks and support nationalization, AND understands that issues relating to working on Sundays and bank holidays have not yet been fully resolved and are likely to continue to impact the level of cancellations.

Speaking about her vow to oppose unions, Ms Haigh told the Evening Standard last week: ‘We will be looking to recruit more staff so that we can negotiate from a position of strength.

“At the moment our railways are understaffed, which means trade unions have a lot of influence because they have more leverage. They can stop the work of their drivers or staff, as well as stop overtime work.

The Northern Transport Commission presented Northern’s plan to improve its performance, but members of the media and the public were excluded.

But before the meeting went private, Northern COO Matt Rice admitted: “Our underlying offering is currently weak, particularly in terms of weekend cancellations.

“There are many systemic causes, some of which are of our own making.”

Rice added that “a lot of the efforts” at Northern are focused on trying to have “a much more progressive, harmonious and co-worker-focused relationship with unions.”

Andy Burnham, the Labor mayor of Greater Manchester and chairman of the Transport for the North committee, told Rice that Northern’s performance this summer “wasn’t good enough” with up to 35 per cent of train cancellations on some weekends.

He highlighted that during the August bank holiday weekend, Northern was forced to issue a “Do Not Travel” warning to customers due to a lack of service.

“It’s really unfair to places that are very busy during the holiday season. Something like this should never happen again,” Burnham added.

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “The Conservatives have been content to sit on their hands and do nothing while standards continue to fall and rail operators fail passengers time and time again. These numbers are the latest example of accepting failure.

“Not on my watch. Staff will always put passengers first and we will hold underperforming operators to much higher standards.

“That is why the Government has called on Northern and other operators who are not meeting passenger expectations to demand improvements. And that’s why we’re driving core and sector reform – including modernizing outdated working practices – across Great British Railways.

“Currently our railways are fragmented, with 14 different operators and Network Rail working under different incentives. Great British Railways, a public railway, will be a game changer – acting as a single mind driving the delivery of a unified railway that puts passengers first.”

This was announced by a Northern spokesman AND: “Our customers have experienced an increased number of cancellations in recent weeks, for which we apologize.

“The primary reason for service cancellations remains the availability of train crew, with the main reasons being high levels of employee illness and Sundays conventionally falling outside the working week.

“A Notice of Infringement issued by the Department for Transport is taken extremely seriously and improving the reliability of our timetable remains our top priority.”

The north’s largest rail operator is canceling more trains than ever

As of March 2020, Northern is owned by the Department of Transport through the Last Resort Operator

Employment in 2024 was 7,125, up from 6,907 in 2023.

The services agreement runs until March 2025 and in the latest set of accounts, OLR said it received a government grant of £648.4m in 2024, up from £597.7m in 2023.

According to OLR’s latest reports, directors “anticipate that new service agreements or extensions of current agreements will be entered into.”

OLR also owns the TransPennine Express, LNER and Southeastern railways.

The government-owned company has declared a profit after tax of £22 million for 2024.

Chief executive Robin Gisby received a salary of £236,000, although no dividends have been paid for the past two years.