Most of Great Britain’s major rail operators are back in public hands – is it working? | Rail industry
*Estimate based on contract expiry and government plans to nationalise every three months. Operator route maps are approximate
The majority of Great Britain’s major rail operators are now publicly owned, as the Labor government continues its efforts to make railways “more reliable, affordable and accessible”.
The nationalization of Greater Anglia on 12 October represents the ninth major passenger service to be brought back into public ownership, leaving seven passengers remaining by the government’s deadline for each operator to be completed by 2027.
The practice, which results in the nationalization of an operator approximately every three months, is phasing out a privatized system that critics say is overly fragmented and profit-driven to the detriment of the passenger experience.
Many businesses were already in public ownership when Labor was elected in 2024, having been nationalized by the Conservatives due to financial difficulties and poor performance.
Meanwhile, Transport for Wales and ScotRail were nationalized by the Welsh and Scottish governments in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
However, under current transport minister Heidi Alexander, the Department for Transport (DfT) has accelerated the pace of nationalization and has placed three operators on the public books since May: South Western Railway, C2C and Greater Anglia.
State of play, October 2025
So far nine of the 16 major rail operators in Britain are now in public ownership:
Tap a carrier to highlight routes, tap again to deselect
The government said the remaining seven would be nationalized. October 2027:
The last nationalized operator Greater Angliatook place on 12 October 2025.
The next operator to be nationalized is West Midlands Trainswhat the government said would happen February 2026.
The expropriations come ahead of the formation next year of a new state-controlled company called Great British Railways, which will manage rail infrastructure and services.
Announced by DfT As the “single guiding mind” to “bring the tram and train together, putting passengers and customers first”, [and] “Rebuilding confidence in the railway”.
It will soon run most of the publicly owned operators in Great Britain and merge them with Network Rail, which owns the tracks, signals and major stations.
But Great Britain’s trains will remain privately owned.
Industry insiders expressed cautious optimism about Labour’s plans, highlighting the potential for Great British Railways to achieve greater coordination and therefore greater efficiency.
But experts have also warned that nationalization alone will not be enough to solve all of Britain’s rail problems, given rising costs.
“Whatever the ownership changes, the government has a huge headache with rail swallowing so many public subsidies, and that’s before we even get to HS2,” said Stephen Glaister, retired professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and former head of the Office for Rail and Road.
“The government promises to make fares cheaper and services better, but both will cost more public money.”
Available data on operators nationalized so far presents a mixed picture of performance.
Many experienced improvements in train punctuality and reductions in cancellations, but others’ performance worsened last year.
The LNER has been one of the most advanced, and in June rail minister Peter Hendy said operator defined as “plan” For broader renationalization efforts.
Guardian graphic. Source: delay and cancellation data taken from the Office of Rail and Road. *Note: South Western Railway, C2C and Greater Anglia were nationalised by the Labour government in the latter half of the time period analysed here
When will the next operators be nationalized?
Labor determined to bring railway into public ownership Party’s 2024 election manifesto – claimed that he had found a way to nationalize the trains “without compensating taxpayers even a penny”.
The government is fast-tracking existing rail contracts rather than an “all-in” approach that nationalizes every operator and pays shareholders at the same time.
The DfT is awaiting the expiry date of each operator’s basic contract; this allows the government to take over without compensating private companies.
The last operator to end this way will be CrossCountry in October 2027, which is when the government says it will complete rail nationalization in Great Britain.
Until then, the government had set a pace of nationalizing one operator every three months every year. West Midlands Railway will enter service in February 2026.
Labour’s current one-off approach builds on the work of its predecessors in government. Several operators, including LNER, North and South East, were brought into public ownership by the Conservatives from 2018.
In these cases, nationalization was undertaken as an emergency measure rather than a deliberate policy, in response to financial difficulties in the case of the LNER, or due to poor performance in the case of Northern.
Additionally, ScotRail and Transport for Wales have been brought into public ownership by their respective governments and their train operations are not expected to be merged with Great Britain Railways.
Labour’s strategy for the remaining operators is based on legal reality; Experts say this could be beneficial given how fragmented the railway in Great Britain has become.
“You can’t do this all at once,” said Marcus Mayers, managing director of the Rail and Station Innovation Corporation. “If you try to merge 22 companies at once, you won’t have the ability to set up the system and merge it that quickly.
“So you’re building an operation that can swallow organizations and swallow organizations at the rate of one every three months. That makes sense.”
Will nationalization improve railways?
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously said his government will not nationalize the railway not for ideological reasons but because of what it can offer passengers.
“We’ve been trying to privatize for twenty or thirty years and it’s an absolute disgrace,” Labor leader said Said in April 2024. “Everyone traveling on trains has been affected by cancellations and delays,” he said.
Privatization was undertaken by the Conservatives in the 1990s following decades of falling passenger numbers under nationalized British Railways.
From 1948 annual journeys on Britain’s railway network fell steadily; From a peak of over 1 billion per year in 1950, it fell to 0.6 billion in 1982.
Following privatization, rail journeys recovered significantly, reaching a new peak of 1.7 billion in 2017.
“Privatization sparked railway renaissance” in question Patrick McLoughlin, transport secretary under David Cameron, in a speech in 2013.
But the impact on other aspects of rail travel has been more mixed.
One of the main attractions of privatization was competition. Because franchises will provide better value for taxpayers.
While the industry overall remained subsidized, some large suburban franchises continued to issue refunds.
But over the last few years, following a huge drop in passenger numbers during the coronavirus pandemic, the amount the government pays to operators in public subsidies has risen to record levels.
“The government is still paying £12bn in operational subsidy, plus HS2 is £7bn plus extracurricular investment projects into existing railways,” Glaister said.
“This is a huge amount of money in the context of the public spending crisis.”
Costs for passengers have also increased. Rail fares have become less affordable since privatization and have risen faster than average earnings over the same period.
Today, a 50km (31 mile) journey by rail costs around £8.90, depending on how much revenue rail operators make for each kilometer traveled on their networks.
Adjusting for inflation, the same journey would have cost £7.54 in 1994.
The rising cost of rail comes amid widespread dissatisfaction with the reliability of Great Britain’s trains.
Last year was the worst year for cancellations nationwide since 2015. According to statistics produced by the Office of Rail and Road.
Labor has pledged to improve reliability and affordability through nationalisation, relying on a united British Railways to end what critics see as an overly fragmented system.
“This is possible because there is efficiency in the integration of rail and train, which can mean solving problems faster,” Mayers said.
“You may be removing commercial imperatives to increase reliability, but you also have more collaboration on how to achieve that. So it’s a good balance, and whether it will work is still up for debate.”
Others are skeptical about how much more efficiency can be gained from the system.
“Governments often say: ‘We’re going to make the railways more efficient, we’re going to buy lots of new equipment, we’re going to employ fewer people to do the work,'” Glaister said.
“But the industry has been trying to do this for years, and regulators have been hammering it to the bottom of their own settlements. And I don’t think there’s a lot of untapped efficiencies to look for.”
A DfT spokesman said: “Through public ownership and the establishment of Great British Railways, the government is fundamentally reforming the way our railways are run, putting passengers first.
“Public ownership will deliver a more responsible, efficient and reliable railway, resulting in greater opportunity and significant growth for communities.
“This is not a silver bullet and it will take time to root out the problems inherited from private ownership, but we expect public sector operators, and once established, Great British Railways, to focus relentlessly on improving the reliability, punctuality and other aspects of the service that matter most to passengers, and we will hold them to account for doing so.”
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