
Labour nationalises second train company
It had been controlled by Italy's state-owned rail company Trenitalia since 2017.
DfT (Department for Transport) Operator, which manages services under public control on behalf of the UK Government, said tickets previously purchased will remain valid.
It added that fares are 'not changing as a direct result of the transfer'.
The overall passenger satisfaction rating for c2c was 89% in the most recent research by watchdog Transport Focus.
This was the joint sixth best performance out of 22 operators.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said: 'Whether you're shopping in Lakeside or walking along the beach in Southend-on-Sea, from today you will be able to get there on a train service run by the public, for the public.
'Public ownership is already tackling deep-rooted problems we see on the railway that's led to spiralling costs, fragmentation and waste.
'A unified network under Great British Railways will take this further with one railway under one brand with one mission – delivering excellent services for passengers wherever they travel.'
GBR is an upcoming public sector body that will oversee Britain's rail infrastructure and train operation.
Ernesto Sicilia, managing director at Trenitalia UK, said: 'As the franchise moves to public ownership, we acknowledge both the progress made and the ongoing challenges of unifying a fragmented rail industry.
'In the meantime, we will continue to support and deliver services on the Avanti West Coast franchise until it too transitions to public ownership in 2026.
'While our role as operator is ending, our dedication to sharing knowledge, supporting innovation and fostering collaboration remains unchanged.
'We recognise that building a resilient and integrated rail network takes time and Trenitalia is determined to play a constructive part in that journey.'
South Western Railway became the first operator brought into public ownership by the Labour Government in May.
It joined Northern, TransPennine Express, Southeastern and LNER, which were nationalised under the Conservative government because of performance failings by the former owners of those franchises.
The next operator to be nationalised will be Greater Anglia on October 12.

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Times
9 hours ago
- Times
Getting railways on track is some task
That's the trains for you. Have a squint at the government publicity for its new transport quango and there's some Union Jack-flagged graphic, saying: 'Great British Railways — coming soon'. Only soon? What's the problem this time? Signal failure? Leaves on the line? The wrong kind of snow? None of them, apparently. Just the time it takes to pass into law the Railways Bill. It will, the government says, create a 'single 'directing mind' bringing track and train together', with GBR running a largely state-owned passenger railway, even if the rolling stock and freight companies will stay private. Already ministers are taking back control of what once were 14 private passenger franchises, most recently South Western and C2C, when their contracts expire. Listen to Heidi Alexander's transport department and GBR will end 'decades of fragmentation and private profiteering'. Yet, you shouldn't really need a new report from Tony Lodge at the Centre for Policy Studies to spot that GBR — a product of Labour's state-knows-best mentality — risks 'morphing into the ghost of British Rail'. Or that it seems a 'solution looking for a problem': one prioritising rail nationalisation above 'efficient operation'. Ministers' antipathy to private 'open access' operators, running without government contracts or subsidy — Hull Trains, Lumo and Grand Central, say, on the east coast line — tells you that. • Virgin Trains' attempt to get back on to the railways blocked Sure, privatisation had its faults, the most glaring the separation of train and track. And some of the passenger growth would have happened anyway. Yet, as Lodge points out, in the two decades up to the pandemic, passenger journeys rose by 107 per cent, services were up by 32 per cent and the private sector invested £14 billion in new trains. Of course, some private outfits failed. A former Labour government shunted Railtrack into the buffers, aghast at its £7 billion of debts, even if its state-owned successor, Network Rail, now has a net £61 billion. Then, there was a trio of financial derailments on the East Coast line: GNER, National Express and Virgin Trains. Yet, franchising largely worked until ministers started to micro-manage it, while also requiring train operators bidding for contracts to forecast the economy 15 years out: a feat patently beyond the Treasury, the Bank of England or the Office for Budget Responsibility. Whether in public or private hands, three problems stand out: the railways need too much subsidy, given they account for just 2 per cent of passenger journeys; capacity is not being used efficiently enough; and ticketing is a mess, with many fares too pricey. All are interrelated. But there's nothing yet from Alexander or GBR to address them. The operational railway needed £12.5 billion of taxpayer subsidy in the year to March 2024 (the latest figures): up by £4.6 billion versus the year to March 2020. A key reason? That even if passenger numbers are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, working from home has killed season ticket sales — 13 per cent of journeys in the year to March 2025 versus 34 per cent pre-Covid. As Lodge points out, that puts the emphasis on three things: new income streams, such as exploiting rail's 52,000-hectare estate to use unused land for everything from solar power to property schemes; shifting capacity from commuters to leisure travellers; and a simplified ticketing app that includes such innovations as a loyalty scheme. He says 'one of GBR's first tasks should be to carry out a full train utilisation study' to match capacity to 'in-demand' services. And he's right that, here, the government is showing 'misguided hostility' to open-access operators. Private companies are far more likely than civil servants to spot a gap in the market for a new service. And the latest annual figures from the state-backed LNER suggest that, rather than eat into its sales, competition on the east coast is driving them up — from £867 million to top £1 billion. Notably, while Britain clamps down on open access, Europe is going in the opposite direction, with France, Spain and Italy finding it cuts fares and lifts service frequency. What, too, of the political risk with GBR? As Lodge notes: 'Creating GBR gives ministers both complete responsibility for the railway and all of the blame' — not least if the unions bring the network to a halt. Alexander is far from proving that her new quango is the best route to getting the railways back on track. Luckily, Rachel Reeves's budget was ingeniously designed to have no impact on 'working people'. So, she won't have to worry about the latest 'Red Flag Alert' report from Begbies Traynor, the business rescue and recovery outfit. It's found that nearly 50,000 UK companies are on the brink of keeling over — up 21.4 per cent on 2024's second quarter. True, as the Begbies boss, Ric Traynor, notes, 'tariffs' and 'geopolitical uncertainty' haven't helped. But 'businesses across the UK are being put under immense strain by the increases to employers' NI' and 'the national minimum wage', with consumer sectors such as bars and restaurants, tourism and retailers particularly hard hit. Still, what a relief for Reeves that working people don't do those sorts of jobs. One day is a bit quick to judge what the EC's Ursula von der Leyen hailed as 'the biggest trade deal ever'. But, having locked in 15 per cent tariffs on most US imports from the EU, the euro fell by 1 per cent-plus against the dollar, Germany's Dax dropped by a similar amount, with France's Cac also down, while the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, spoke of the 'considerable damage' to come. As for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, they touched intra-day highs. An inescapable day one verdict: Von der Leyen's been trumped.


BBC News
14 hours ago
- BBC News
Rochford Council to trial 30-minute free parking scheme
Drivers will be able to park for free for up to 30 minutes in a council's car parks in a move to support local Council in Essex has agreed to try out the free parking scheme at most of its 11 car parks for the next three months "to help boost footfall".The council's leader, Conservative Danielle Belton, said the decision was something requested by business and residents "for a number of years".According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a meeting of the council's economic development, regeneration, and tourism committee heard the trial could cost the authority up to £42,000 for the three month period. Belton said it could also help with parking issues around schools, as parents could use short-term free spaces at drop off and pick up to council documents, the cost of a 30-minute stay in most surface car parks in the district was reduced last year from 70p to 55p in an effort to stimulate activity on the high said: "Ultimately, the council is dedicated to supporting our local businesses and especially the town centres, and it's a documented fact in other towns that short stay parking can help boost footfall. She added the council had built up more money from the car parks than it had spent, meaning it now had reserves to implement the new policy."The end goal is we see a better footfall in the town, which then creates more of a drive for other businesses to consider coming here, if they see we've offerings where people can pop into town, grab a coffee, grab a takeaway, do some errands, whatever it may be."The free parking will not apply to The Approach near Rayleigh Train Station and Hockley Woods Car Park. Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.


Telegraph
19 hours ago
- Telegraph
Thousands of state-run trains cancelled
Thousands of state-run trains have been cancelled because too many drivers are off on holiday. South Western Railway (SWR) has cancelled about 2,500 trains over the next four weeks because of staff shortages, it said. The company, which was taken into Government ownership in May, has slashed 5 per cent of its 1,600 daily services over the next month because 'large numbers of our drivers are on annual leave or cannot work due to sickness', it said. Jeremy Varns, the co-ordinator of the SWR Watch group, said: 'It's increasingly evident that passengers are no longer a priority. With operators now financially supported by the Treasury, there's little motivation left to provide a reliable, quality service. 'Time and again, the industry's default response to challenges is to reduce timetables, not improve them. Meanwhile, passengers are paying record fares for turn-up-and-go travel, only to face declining reliability and longer gaps between services,' he continued. 'Rather than using the summer holiday period as an opportunity to promote rail travel with affordable fares, and extra services to tourist destinations, the focus appears to be on charging more while delivering less.' DfT blames private sector Officials from the Department for Transport (DfT), which now owns SWR, blamed 'previous private sector ownership' for August's spate of planned cancellations. It comes after the Labour government handed train drivers a 15 per cent pay rise last year as one of its first acts in office. About 80 trains per day will not run between July 28 and August 28 as a result of the summer holiday surge. Passengers using South Western Railway (SWR) may feel especially aggrieved by the latest batch of cancellations because they come after repeated signal failures at London Waterloo, SWR's main London station, earlier this month. The latest failure on Monday was so bad that bosses were forced to issue a 'do not travel' warning, leaving hundreds of thousands unable to commute to work. Off-peak services mainly affected A company spokesman insisted that the August cancellations are being made to prevent disruption caused by short-notice staff absences, and that they would mainly affect 'quieter, off-peak services'. 'The summer timetable sees a small reduction in services – less than 5 per cent of our 1,600 daily services – at a time when fewer customers are travelling with us,' said the spokesman. 'Over the summer holiday period, customer numbers drop by 12-17 per cent and the services we have removed are those with the lowest forecast demand.' None of the cancellations are included in downloadable copies of timetables, although it is understood that online journey planners have been revised. Referring to the delayed and over-budget £1billion fleet of new Arterio trains being introduced by SWR, the spokesman continued: 'Since the transfer to public ownership we have unlocked our new trains programme and now have 14 Arterios in daily service, enhancing capacity, comfort and reliability for customers across our suburban network. 'This timetable reduction will help protect the driver training programme so we can roll out even more Arterios in the coming months, while also and minimising the risk of on-the-day cancellations due to colleagues taking their annual leave during the school holidays' A DfT spokesman said: 'We are driving high standards for operators, ensuring they put passengers first by protecting as many services as possible while making improvements for the whole network, and making sure more trains show up when they should. 'The issues causing these reductions were inherited from previous private sector ownership under the flawed franchise system, which is exactly the sort of thing we hope to eradicate through Great British Railways. 'The new Managing Director will be setting out a plan to drive up performance and is already ensuring these issues have as little impact on passengers as possible.'