Latest news with #BritishRail
Business News Wales
4 days ago
- Business News Wales
Barry Rail Depot Restored in Transport Upgrade
Passenger train drivers are once again based in Barry for the first time since the 1990s after work was completed on the depot there. The move sees the number of people working at the depot rise to 58. Transport for Wales took over the rail depot there in 2022 and have been proceeding to develop it alongside partners in Network Rail. From the May timetable change on 18 May, 39 drivers will now be based there alongside depot colleagues, cleaners and train crew managers. Most of the Class 756 and Class 231 fleets will be stabled there to serve the lines between Rhymney and Barry Island, as well as the Treherbert, Merthyr and Aberdare lines (until the Class 398 fleet enter service). Heavy maintenance and fuelling will continue to take place at Canton Depot in Cardiff. Depot Manager Alun Davies said: 'This is transformational for people and the area and is testament to the hard work of so many to make it happen. 'It's incredible to have the drivers coming back here. 'When we took the depot on it required a major clean up operation. We took a really joined up approach to it, putting safety and sustainability at the forefront, as well as looking ahead and planning for the future.' As part of the work a safe walking route has been installed between Barry town railway station and the depot. A sustainable well-being garden has also been created for staff and visitors, which also helps to support biodiversity around the depot. Barry depot had been built in the 1890s as part of the developments of the docks and railway. However it closed as a driver depot in the 1980s as British Rail looked to reorganise ahead of privatisation in the early 1990s. EWS had drivers based there until 1999. Prior to TFW takeover, John Buxton, Director of Cambrian Transport, operated out of the site since 2009. The depot, garden and crossing were officially opened to drivers at a special event where MS Jane Hutt, Vale of Glamorgan Council Leader Lis Burnett and several other key local stakeholders were given a tour of the depot.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Sir Bob Reid obituary
In the spring of 1990, the chief executive's office at British Rail received an urgent telephone call from the area manager at Newcastle upon Tyne saying there was a one-armed Scotsman wandering around the main signal box claiming to be BR's new chairman and wanting to know how everything worked. Was it all right to tell him? The man was Bob Reid, who had recently moved from Shell, where he was the UK chairman, and was now on the brink of a difficult five-year stint at BR that would end in a privatisation about which he had serious misgivings. His foray into the signal box, matched by an excursion into the drivers' restroom at Waterloo, was typical of the man. Determined, impulsive and impatient to get things moving, he had a liking for human contact and an easy manner, regardless of rank. The offer to take over BR had come in 1990. Reid, who has died aged 91, was not the first choice; rumour had it that 20 people had already turned it down. But he saw it as an opportunity to apply his skills to an inward-looking public sector organisation that had long been a concern to government and which faced major challenges with the forthcoming Channel tunnel rail link. Reid could not wait to get started, but he dismayed some of his new colleagues with a bullish joke that he was used to much bigger projects than those he faced at BR. When he took over, the railways were improving, although the level of government subsidy remained controversial. Under his predecessor, a veteran railwayman confusingly also called Sir Robert Reid, steady improvements had been made, helped by a benign economic environment. The business had been reorganised into sectors, which proved a success, but the recession of the early 1990s now hit railway finances and Bob Reid failed to get government backing for BR's proposed investments. He left the running of the railway largely to his chief executive, John Welsby, and concentrated on projects such as the Channel tunnel, which the government had made a priority. BR favoured a route through south London that provided alternative options and would be linked to expensive new facilities. But the government, with Michael Heseltine promoting the regeneration of the Docklands area, opted for an east London route. Reid took the rebuff badly and some felt he might resign, but he remarked in an outburst that he immediately regretted: 'When you are in the middle of a pantomime, you want to stay with it.' When BR famously blamed 'leaves on the line' and 'the wrong kind of snow' for various delays, and when he failed to get his investment plans through, his lack of success began to invite questions about his competence in dealing with government. It was not helped when the transport minister, Malcolm Rifkind, described him as being 'on a learning curve'. Within the railways, Reid's lack of appetite for detailed knowledge grated, and managers were reluctant to discuss problems for fear of receiving a diktat. But they respected his strong emphasis on safety, including his insistence that track maintenance supervisors must brief their gangs on safety every morning. Reid's difficulties multiplied when John Major's new government decided to privatise the railways. That scenario had not been part of Reid's original brief, and he was publicly critical of the detail. He forecast accurately that the complex division of the system would multiply bureaucracy, that profits would not be sufficiently reinvested, and that safety could be compromised. Some in BR hoped he would challenge the plan by resigning. But he argued that 'managing large undertakings through the medium of government is a recipe for all sorts of problems. Even though I would have done it differently, getting BR into the private sector is the main thing.' By 1995, at the end of his term, Reid could point to better financial performance (with expectations of a £400m-a-year profit for BR), an improvement in industrial relations that had seen just two days lost to strikes over his whole period in office, and improved productivity. But he had lost the strategic battles. The son of Elizabeth (nee Paul), and William Reid, he was born in Cupar, Fife, where his life was transformed by a terrible accident when he was nine. Working in his father's butcher's shop one evening, he attempted to unstick a mincing machine and lost his right hand. He described the incident as 'catastrophic' but insisted it only sharpened his desire to be part of the action. He learned to write with his left hand within a fortnight and became a formidable golfer with a handicap of four. 'Making things happen is a state of mind,' he would say later. 'The joy of leadership lies as much in overcoming setbacks as enjoying the rewards of success.' Reid demonstrated his leadership during a career with Shell that he started in 1956 as a management trainee after studying politics, economics and history at St Andrews. He represented the university at golf and met his future wife, Joan Oram, there – they married in 1958. He also forged significant friendships with two aspiring politicians, Bob Horton, later chairman of BP and National Rail, and John MacGregor, who was appointed transport secretary while Reid was running BR. His Shell career, largely focused on the 'downstream' processing and marketing of oil, took him to Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya and then back to Nigeria as managing director from 1970-74, before a similar job in Thailand and a posting in Australia as director of downstream oil. In 1983 he was brought back to London as coordinator for supply and marketing, becoming chairman and chief executive of Shell UK in 1985. Reid, nicknamed 'the one-armed bandit', was admired for his energy and enthusiasm but never reached the committee of managing directors, as board level was known at Shell. His skills in dealing with people were deployed in what was largely a representational role, although it included responsibility for UK refining and the important North Sea operations. His experience of determinedly camping in the outer offices of Nigerian ministers when they refused to see him was judged to have helped him with the UK government. Reid's five years as chairman reinforced his reputation for energy, unstuffiness and charisma. He crusaded for proper management training (in the absence then of business schools), establishing the Foundation for Management Education and chairing the British Institute of Management (1988-90). With his sympathy for the arts (particularly music and opera) and a keen eye for public relations, he took Shell's sponsorship in a new direction with backing for Bafta. At a time when Shell's continuing activity in South Africa was under attack, Reid argued that the company could be part of change, and provided liberally managed employment that helped it to be seen in a different light. He was knighted in 1990. On leaving BR he became chairman of the retail giant Sears Holdings, and later deputy governor of the Bank of Scotland. He was the first chancellor of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Other chairmanships included London Electricity, Avis Europe and the International Petroleum Exchange. Joan died in 2017. Reid is survived by their sons, Douglas, Patrick and Michael. Robert Paul Reid, business executive, born 1 May 1934; died 28 May 2025
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Do we really think that Heidi Alexander can run Britain's railways?
What excitement. I travelled into central London today on a state-run train. It was just like old times. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s the government owned and operated virtually everything, not just the railways which were nationalised in 1948. The telephones (BT), our power (CEGB), coal (NCB), steel, shipbuilding, water (various water boards), the buses, even flying (BA). Until 1972 you could go on a state-organised holiday with Thomas Cook. Almost 30 years after the trains were privatised they are being returned to state ownership starting with South Western Railways (SWR). This process is being done in a piecemeal way: when a private operator's franchise expires it is nationalised and will become part of Great British Railways (GBR). SWR happened to be the first in line, not because it is especially bad. Indeed, my own experience is that it has been pretty good other than when the unions went on strike or the already renationalised Network Rail had messed up, which was hardly the fault of FirstGroup which ran the trains until Sunday. Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, took the first People's Train out of Waterloo and declared it to be a 'new dawn' when most of us old enough to remember British Rail see it as a step into the past. Of course nothing had changed. Indeed, the very first renationalised SWR service involved a rail replacement bus: the 05.36 from Woking to Waterloo had to terminate at Surbiton because of Bank Holiday weekend engineering works. The trains bear the same livery and have the same staff. They will eventually be rebranded with a GBR logo though not for a few years. Ms Alexander said there would be a 'cultural reset' for the railway whatever that means. One thing we do know is that the Government will be responsible for ensuring investment in new rolling stock, fare policy and ensuring the trains run on time. The reason BR was privatised was because by the mid-1990s none of these could any longer be guaranteed when the Treasury had competing demands on revenues, not least from a rapidly expanding welfare state. This is even more the case today, so where will the money come from? The politics are problematic as well. Ms Alexander says the re-nationalisation means 'moving away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failing passengers, and moving confidently into a new really is a watershed moment.' We shall see about that. When the carriages start to look run-down, the fares go up and trains are late because the drivers are on strike for ever bigger pay rises from a Labour Party they have helped to bankroll there will be only one body to blame: the Government. She added: 'Of course, change isn't going to happen overnight. We've always been clear that public ownership isn't a silver bullet.' Indeed, not. In fact it is invariably a dead hand because nationalised industries have none of the market pressures faced by commercial operators. But it must be conceded that the railways – and to an even greater extent the water industry which became a massive rip-off of taxpayers – do raise legitimate questions about the efficacy of privatisation. It is worth remembering how radical this was at the time. In a speech to the Tory Reform Group in 1985, the former prime minister Harold Macmillan, then 91 and with just a year to live, pronounced a characteristically patrician verdict upon the privatisation programme of the Thatcher government. It was, he said, like selling off 'the Georgian silver'. His speech was widely ridiculed: here was an essentially Edwardian figure unfashionably wedded to the notion that the state could run industry and public utilities better than private companies. Yet 40 years on there is a resurgence of Macmillanesque hankering after a sepia-tinted world when the trains were run from Whitehall, electricity was provided by the Soviet-sounding Central Electricity Generating Board and water board chiefs were appointed by civil servants. But it cannot be denied that the sale of the public utilities did not create the benign market conditions – or the mass share ownership – that had been envisaged. Privatising 'public good' industries upon which everyone relies and which are natural monopolies was always fraught with difficulty. Since the scope for competition was limited, regulators were needed to protect the interests of consumers and they have not done their jobs properly. It was also hoped that moving these businesses into private hands would ease the pressure on the taxpayer; yet the subsidy to the railways is greater now than at the time of privatisation. On top of that, the UK state relinquished control of utilities only for foreign government-controlled companies like EDF to move in and take over. But even though privatisation was not as propitious as had been hoped, that is not an argument for their return to state ownership, as the unions propose and many people unhappy with their performance would like to see. This is not an ideological point but a pragmatic one: the old system was inefficient, costly and beset by institutionalised inertia. Since privatisation, there has been investment that would simply not have happened had the utilities remained in state hands – especially after the financial crash of 2008 when the biggest spending cuts were in capital projects. The failure of privatised utilities to perform well does not mean they will do better in state hands. In fact, history suggests otherwise. Nonetheless, the benefits still need to spread beyond the boardrooms of a few multi-national cartels. If privatisation of industry and utilities was the challenge 40 years ago, today it is the desocialisation of public services like health and education, with a move towards a social insurance scheme in the former and vouchers in the latter to provide greater choice. No political party is proposing such a radical approach and are just harking back to a world that has long gone. If the answer to the failings of privatisation is re-nationalisation, then the wrong questions are being asked. After all, Macmillan's error was to imagine that the family had any silver left when, in reality, it had already been pawned several times over.
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Renationalised rail is just one sign of Britain's slide back to the 1970s
SIR – The gradual renationalisation of Britain's railways (report, May 24) will simply result in more taxpayers' money being wasted. Last time round, British Rail lost vast sums of money every day. It will be no different now. We can also look forward to more industrial action. Tim Sayer Bristol SIR – We are going back to the bad old days. Take the 'Great' out of the Government's Great British Railways, and we are simply left with what we had before. It will not work. Jeremy Clarkson (Magazine, May 24) is right to say that this country has 'fallen off a cliff'. Jack Marriott Churt, Surrey SIR – Northern Rail was nationalised on March 1 2020. It has continued to offer a very poor service to the public. Together with St Helens Council, it started a project to improve the town's Lea Green station. This was supposed to have been completed in 2023, yet some of the new facilities are still not open. Does anyone really believe that nationalisation is going to improve our railways? Chris Lewis Widnes, Cheshire SIR – It is strange that Sir Keir Starmer, famously the son of a toolmaker who made it to the top of the legal profession, so despises aspiration in others. Nik Perfitt Bristol SIR – Angela Rayner's declaration that she has 'no desire' to lead the Labour Party ( May 25) surely marks the beginning of her leadership bid. As Sir Keir Starmer becomes increasingly unpopular and detached from the electorate, Ms Rayner will build a hard-Left coalition financed by the trade unions. Sir Keir can expect a brutal coup worthy of the Borgias. Mike Tickner Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire SIR – Michael Miller (Letters, May 24), addressing the prospect of further tax rises, asserts that they are the 'membership fee to live in a civilised society'. I want my money back. Jane Moth Stone, Staffordshire SIR – I do not think taxing the rich is considered an 'evil', as Michael Miller suggests. Over-taxing them, however, is simply foolish, because they will leave the country, taking their money with them. In any case, Britain's wealthy already pay a substantial share of tax revenues. Making the 'pips squeak' is counterproductive. Rosanne Greaves Oakham, Rutland
Daily Mirror
24-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Labour's will 'strain every sinew for trains to be decent value for money'
Heidi Alexander insists newly created body to run trains won't be 'British Rail mark 2', as she commits to keep station ticket offices open Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has vowed to 'strain every sinew' to improve the experience for passengers using the new nationalised railway. History was made on Sunday after South Western Railway services became the first to transfer back into public control under Labour 's plans. The government claims the process - which will involve the creation of Great British Railways - will end nearly 30 years of 'fragmentation and waste' under the Tories privatisation. But ministers will face pressure from millions of long-suffering passengers to know when services will get better. Ms Alexander, unveiling the first trains to carry a version of the Great British Railways branding, said it was impossible to say when ticket prices would fall. But she added: 'What I can promise is that I will strain every sinew to make sure passengers get decent value for money, because people are having to pay a fair whack for train travel so they need to know that, what they are paying results in trains that arrive on time, have lower levels of cancellations and a better passenger experience.' Ms Alexander also made clear station ticket offices were safe - after Tory-backed plans to close them. Faced with a backlash, including the Mirror's hard-hitting campaign on the issue, the last government was forced into a dramatic climbdown. Ms Alexander was adamant, saying: 'It is really important that people who are using our stations have access to staff to help ensure they are able to purchase the cheapest ticket that's available on the day. I know the presence of visible staff in a station is a reassurance to people.' Ten train services are expected to be nationalised by the Labour government between now and 2027 - beginning with South Western Railway. Four rail franchises - LNER, Northern, Southeastern, and TransPennine Express - were already brought back into public ownership by the previous government. Around 50,000 full-time staff are employed by the 14 train operators. Speaking from South Western Railway's depot in Bournemouth, Ms Alexander said the new nationally owned railway was designed to tackle the current £2billion cost of running the network, aside from what is spent on infrastructure, tracks and signalling. "Today is a watershed moment in our work to return the railways to the service of passengers,' she added. As part of the plans, services will be prevented from carrying the new Great British Railways livery until they come up-to-scratch on punctuality, reducing cancellations, and making the passenger experience better. Each will be given their own bespoke standards to meet. South Western Railway's new management has been given 100 days to come up with an improvement plan. Great British Railways, the body overseeing the new system, is not expected to be set-up until 2027. It will be broken up into regions. Ms Alexander hit back at suggestions it may resemble the old British Rail. 'This is not British Rail mark 2,' she said. 'This is going to be a 21st century organisation that is commercial, that is lean, that is agile.' She also insisted the new body would operate free of political interference. 'I don't want to be the fat controller of the railways - I want experts to be running the railways,' she told reporters. The next operator's services to be brought under public control will be c2c - which runs between London and Essex - on July 20, with Greater Anglia being renationalised in October. The Department for Transport says its renationalisation policy will save taxpayers up to £150million per year in fees previously paid to private companies which ran services. Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary of the TSSA union, said: 'The transfer of SWR into public hands is a landmark moment which heralds in practical terms the beginning of the end to three decades of failed privatisation across the railways. 'The Labour government has taken the right decision and the necessary steps to bring our railways back in house, ending a broken system dreamt up by Conservative governments which cared only about profit, not the best ways and means of running our precious rail network. However, we do have concerns about the future of travel concessions for railway workers and their families. These are long-standing entitlements that recognise the public service contribution of railway staff. We urge the government to protect and uphold these benefits as part of its commitment to a fair and just transition to public ownership." RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey said: 'Public ownership of South Western Railway is a major step forward and is a clear rejection of the failed privatisation model. But the job is incomplete when our contracted-out members remain outsourced and not reaping the benefits of nationalisation. "
