25th May 2025 - SWR Franchise expires and services Nationalised

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Adding the date to our diary.   Getting closer

[TaplowGreen]

Adding the date to our diary.   Getting closer

Will anyone notice the difference?

[ChrisB]

Nope

[Timmer]

Nope

Is the correct answer.

[LiskeardRich]

Is the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) date public yet? I was told it by a member of staff that they’d been informed, whilst I was working rail replacement but have completely forgotten the exact date. It was some time in the summer. He did say it could be rolled later if certain processes are followed.

[old original]

According to the attached, the current contract runs until25th June 2028..

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-greater-western-2022-rail-contract

[LiskeardRich]

According to the attached, the current contract runs until25th June 2028..

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-greater-western-2022-rail-contract

As I understand it, it ends on 25th June 2025 with a 3 year option that could take it to 2028. See 2.2a in the first link. The core date is 2025, and can end anytime after that date subject to a minimum 3 periods notice, to end no later than the expiry date of 25/6/28.

The notice has been issued is my understanding.

[ChrisB]

My understanding is that all the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) have been identified for this year, at a pace that transfers can be successful.

SWR^» (South Western Railway - about), GA^▸ (Greater Anglia) and C2C (I think) are the 3 for this year.

Next year's are still to be identified & dates given. So unless GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have been given far more notice than the 3 periods that they have to be given (and that is entirely possible), they haven't yet received notice. But if they have been given many periods additional notice, it doesn't have to become public until those 3 periods of notice are due.

[ChrisB]

From the Telegraph, via MSN

Labour blunder will cost taxpayers £250m extra to nationalise rail firm

Labour’s nationalisation of a major train company will cost taxpayers an extra £250 million after a blunder by civil servants, The Telegraph can reveal.

South Western Railway (SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)), which serves London and a large swathe of southern England, will be operated by the Government from May 25.

However, a negotiating error by the Department for Transport (DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)) means taxpayers must spend an extra £50 million a year to lease SWR trains after that date.

Passengers could be told to pay higher ticket prices to offset some of the increased cost, even though public subsidy for the railways stood at £12.5 billion last year.

At the centre of the blunder is the fact that, as is the case with almost all government-franchised operators, SWR does not own its trains. All its rolling stock is leased from companies known as Roscos.

Operators preparing to take over a rail franchise typically start negotiating with Roscos over prices for trains about 18 months in advance of their start date, said industry sources.

Even though DfT itself set SWR’s franchise end date as May 25 and published this on its government website, civil servants did not start negotiating with SWR’s Roscos until Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, announced in December that the operation would be nationalised.

This decision to leave talks to the last-minute meant that DfT gave itself just a third of the normal time needed to put together a deal.

The result of DfT’s short-notice negotiation, together with civil servants’ insistence that the lease could only last for five years, was an extra £50 million a year on the price of the trains, totalling £250 million.

Angel Trains, Porterbrook and Rock Rail – the Roscos supplying SWR – each raised their prices by between 10 and 20 per cent as a result of the increased risk from an unusually short contract, insiders said.

“There’s sod all, basically, that the Government can do about that because it’s now far too late to do anything different,” one added.

The one-sided offer came about because DfT had forgotten that it could not simply roll over SWR’s existing contracts, an insider claimed – although a Government source insisted that civil servants could not start negotiating until the rail nationalisation bill received Royal Assent in December.

Previously, DfT has taken over failing private rail operators such as Northern and LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about). All of those takeovers occurred in the middle of the franchise, meaning existing deals stayed in place.

Britain is already tightening its belt because of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, which threaten the spending plans of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and could potentially trigger further tax rises.

Amid the global economic uncertainty, the Tories warned that the taxpayer could not afford Labour’s flagship rail nationalisation plans, with another nine train companies set to follow SWR into state ownership over the next three years.

Jerome Mayhew, the Conservative shadow transport minister, said: “Labour’s pandering to the rail unions’ demand for full nationalisation is already costing the taxpayer dear.

“The Government was warned that their plans were wrong-headed but they refused to listen to anyone but their union funders.”

Labour promised in its general election manifesto that it could nationalise train companies “without costing taxpayers a penny in compensation”.

Competition investigation
In March the Office of Rail and Road said it was reopening a 2020 investigation into choice and competition in the rolling stock market, over fears that Roscos were charging too much and failing to compete properly against each other.

Rock Rail, which owns the controversial £1 billion Arterio train fleet, whose entry into SWR service has been delayed partly because of trade union objections to the size of its windscreen wiper, did not respond to a request for comment.

Angel Trains, owner of the 750-carriage Siemens Desiro fleet operated by SWR, declined to comment and said its negotiations with DfT were commercially confidential.

Porterbrook, which owns a minority of SWR’s trains, declined to comment for the same reason.

A government source said: “This Government is taking the railways back into public ownership at the lowest reasonable cost to the taxpayer, so we can get on with making the long-overdue improvements needed to make day-to-day journeys easier.

“Negotiations like these take two and a half years on average, and so should have been started by the previous Conservative government in 2023, whether the railways were being taken into public ownership or not.

“This is the long tail of Tory incompetence, which continues to fail passengers, even when they are not in power.

They added: “The only alternative available to this Government would have been to buy the current operator out of the contract, a few months before it lapsed anyway – but this would have incurred the same rolling stock renewal costs next month, in addition to millions of pounds worth of compensation paid to the outgoing operator.”

[grahame]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceqg73znzzeo

South Western Railway (SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)) has been renationalised, making it the first train company to transfer to public ownership under Labour.

The first nationalised service will leave at 05:36 from Woking to Surbiton though it will be partially covered by a rail replacement bus service.

The government has hailed the move as a "new dawn for rail" but it held back from promising lower fares, focusing more on plans to improve services and use profits to reinvest in infrastructure.

Unions have expressed concerns over outsourcing to private companies, while the opposition Conservatives said Labour must "deliver on their promises".

SWR trains are now the responsibility of DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) (Department for Transport) Operator and will be integrated into Great British Railways (GBR^▸ (Great British Railways)), which will oversee all railway infrastructure.

The article goes on to summarise the plans for each TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company), though I question whether the 2027 date is certain as I understood at least one may carry on to 2028

Two more rail firms, C2C and Greater Anglia, will be brought into public ownership later this year.

Four major operators have already been brought under public ownership under previous Conservative governments - East Coast Mainline, TransPennine, Northern and South Eastern (LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about)).

Seven more companies will be renationalised by 2027 as each of their contracts end – or sooner if their performance is judged to be unacceptable.

These are:
West Midlands Trains
East Midlands Railway
Avanti West Coast
CrossCountry
Chiltern Railways
Govia Thameslink Railway
Great Western

Current government plans are to renationalise nearly all passenger rail services across England, Wales and Scotland by 2030, proposals which have been attacked the Conservatives.

The article continues with discussions over ticket prices - which the government has refrained from saying will come down with woolly words that suggest to me that they will not (and "if GBR can find a way" which I'm sure they could with the right goverment environment).    It also talks of union concerns for services to the operator subcontracted out, which means that union members "not reaping the benefits of nationalisation".

Alexander is expected to travel on the first fully rail-operated route from London Waterloo to Shepperton in Surrey at 06:14.

It will be the first service with the new GBR livery. The words "Great British Railways" and "coming soon" are painted in white against a royal blue background decorated with part of a union flag.

I'll bet the journaislsts covering that will love the early start.  The cynical element of me questions the use of very light and very dark colours which may take a lot of keeping clean - though it has been done before - and the potential symbolic use of just part of a flag

[Bob_Blakey]

Q. How many more carriages are going to be adorned with 'Great British Railways Coming Soon' vinyls only for them to require replacement when GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) actually arrives - is there a Delay Attribution Code for government incompetence? - and at what financial cost to the taxpayer?

[ChrisB]

Sure.ly that is a separate vinyl that can simply be peeled off at the time?

[infoman]

For any one who may I have been at the launch,was any one from GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) actually there,or was Heidi Alexander the face of GBR?

I think most of us know the biggest issue is the leasing of the trains,
will the separate company's be allowed to buy there own sets?

[grahame]

I think most of us know the biggest issue is the leasing of the trains, will the separate company's be allowed to buy there own sets?

The RoSCos will no longer (in theory) have a free market in which they can lease their assets to the highest bidder but will rather have a single major customer - HMG, with open access minnows taking a little.  In practise, who-leases-what has been specified by HMG anyway with the move from franchises to operational contracts.

A very few trains have (already) been TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) / TOC Parent owned - thinking of the five HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) that First purchased at one point.  And I would envisage future train purchases might by by HMG and managed by RoSCos.  Can anyone help with an answer here?  Of course, you could also nationalise the train building and heavy maintenance business too and call it (Great) British Rail Engineering, couldn't you?

[ChrisB]

GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) doesn't actually exist yet, so there won't have been anyone from GBR present