Great British Railways

I'm the Rail Services Lead at Rail North Partnership and I'm also Community Rail Liaison at the Department for Transport Operator and the Chairperson of Oxfordshire Community Rail Partnership.

busy um your keynote today was talking about department for transport operator talking about what great british railways might look like as it continues to develop over the next 12 to 18 months and community rails position in that and you were quite adamant that community rail is in a really strong place to contribute to a a railway that is being designed to serve the general public

Absolutely.

I think community rail is fundamentally central to a railway that better serves the communities that it actually connects to.

I think we need to move away from historical silos, and that's certainly an overarching aim of Great British Railways, is to not just reunite track and train, but actually to enable through the integrated business units.

a better level of collaboration and communication across all the different organisations and suppliers and stakeholders within the rail industry.

And we're all working towards the same fundamental goal, which is a better service, a more reliable service and more accessible service for our passengers.

So just to sort of lift the lid, actually sort of peek behind the curtain like Wizard of Oz style, we catch up quite regularly every other Friday and we have a, you know, it's supposed to be half an hour but it never lasts half an hour because we have a good chat and catch up.

LNERMD David Horne has a new job after a decade on the East Coast mainline.

He's been appointed as Integrated Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, ICCCO, to generate customer insight and commercial leadership ahead of Great British Railways.

It's a new industry-wide role intended to shape a customer-first railway, and David starts in November.

Apparently, he will ultimately believe in LNER, but for now, he'll continue as its MD.

And we see that.

When we first launched our technology, I got so many messages, either on the app store or email, people saying that, And they have not been able to use the network for a very, very long time.

Do you think Great British Railways, as that develops, is now looking at this in the right way? Are you confident that as we change our operating model, if you like, in the UK so fundamentally, the sort of things you're talking about are being given the appropriate level of focus?

I'm actually very optimistic through my conversation engagement with the Minister and with the Department of Transport and with the stakeholders within GPR and the current National Rail RDG.

So you

mentioned there about Great British Railways.

I mean, that is going to be a period of absolutely massive change, and yet you're still having to work and plan and develop strategies during a period of change where you don't really know how this thing's going to finally land.

How do you actually go about doing that?

We've kind of been pre-warned to expect quite a difficult one.

But what things do you want to see? What would enable you to have the confidence to carry on investing and being confident about the future? Is there anything that he could say or do in the budget that would help that?

I think the answer to that, if I may go first, is reaffirmation of the commitment towards rail reform and Great British Railways and the funding that goes with that.

Now, over the course of the next few months, as we move into GBR, the SOFA and the HLOS, that's essentially the budget for the next control period, FP1, will be constructed and committed to.

And what we're witnessing is other places that have got a service that is not full, where services are having to be reduced.

So I think that we've got a really good opportunity now when we're moving into Great British Railways to look at a bigger map, step back and look at this map and look at where the opportunities are to provide those services which so far have been missing.

So I want to finish on the Great British Railways point because, I mean, you're right.

I mean, Avanti are reducing some service, but only for relatively small periods.

And that's not the same as annual demand, is it? But let's just talk about Great British Railways.

Network Rail are unlikely to change their view on capacity on the West Coast.

When they become GBR...

So that means all of those two services have always been centred on either Birmingham or Cardiff.

Mark, let me slightly correct you there, because you said it's published by the UK government, but it's not.

It's actually published by something called Great British Railways.

And this is its inaugural publication.

And yet, actually, Great British Railways doesn't exist yet because the legislation to create it hasn't been passed.

So that's something of a statement of intent.

which is basically saying Great British Railway is coming and it's going to be doing lots of things over the next few months, which it is indeed.

In other words, it's more kind of...

It's not kind of posited with possibilities and maybes and chopping and changing.

Right.

Now, last week we discussed the recent rolling stock and infrastructure strategy published by GBR, and it's fair to say that our digital pulse bag w- was inundated, nay brimming with comments.

Richard, I think you had fun wading through it all.

What were the key messages? The polite ones anyway.

The ORR has published an important new consultation.

It's a draft retail code of practice that will establish new safeguards for the future online rail ticket market under Great British Railways.

Now the draft, this draft code is intended to help ensure the market remains fair and open, supporting competition and passenger choice as GBR takes on a major role in ra-rail retail a-as its- as itself.

Uh, GBR will be required to comply with the retail code via its license, uh, allowing ORR to monitor compliance and where necessary, consider formal enforcement action.

Someone needs to come here with a check and fix those issues and make these better for the passengers.

on a value for money basis and of course we are incentivized to do that because at the end of the day our investors have invested in something they want to delight passengers they want them to be really happy with their train because they put it on the front of their their prospectuses you know when they're telling their investors this is what we're doing with your pensions you know this is the train it's a lovely thing uh to behold so they love it and but they want it to be a successful thing they don't want it to be a horrible train uh so there's you know there's that and then it's value for money of these risk transfers you know there is a risk transfer it's important that it happens um because leaving these risks with Network Rail and GBR.

When things go wrong, you need to act very quickly.

And you don't need to be at the behest of lots of advisors telling you what they think they might do or what it might be like next week, or maybe if you did this and you did that.

On the 1st of July, you announced a big... first close of a new £800 million platform to further invest in rolling stock.

And you said this, you said, we're very pleased to have reached this first close, which demonstrates strong international investor confidence in UK rail under the leadership of Great British Railways and its long-term future.

And you went on to say, now we are bringing more global capital into the UK to keep new trains coming into service, supporting the next phase of GBR investment across the network to significantly improve availability and reliability of passenger services.

I mean, powerful words.

So a couple of things.

I think first on Great British Railways, you could not make it up that the Labour government have nationalised railways, but they didn't nationalise the trains for a pretty important bit of that whole thing.

And I think it points to Keir Starmer's whole approach to things, which is, you know, to do slogans or to...

I know we said we'll get on to Palestine in a moment, but his shocking comments to say...

Have a listen to this.

We've had, um, a rolling stock and infrastructure strategy published, uh, recently, and, you know, it's, it's a new departure and po- possibly only possible because of GBR.

What was your reaction to it?

Um, the, the latest one?

Richard spoke this week to someone who has, let's say, firm views on this.

Noel, welcome to Green Signals, um, again.

Um, look, we've got GBR, Great British Railways rolling stock and infrastructure strategy.

Um, it's got a lot to say about traction and electrification and so on.