Rail minister Huw Merriman, who represented Bexhill & Battle as its MP for nine years, will not be standing in the forthcoming election. He will leave the government on 4 July. A lawyer by profession, he was first elected as an MP in 2015. In the 2019 election he gained a majority of 26,059, the equivalent of 63.6 per cent of the vote – compared with 62 per cent at the previous election. As a back bencher, he chaired the Transport Select Committee between January 2020 and October 2022, when he was appointed to his first ministerial post within the Department for Transport, as Minister of State responsible for railways and HS2. He has remained in that post since then. He said: ‘I have loved being an MP and I leave with a heavy heart. ‘The constituency is a beautiful place, with wonderful people in every town and village. And I’ve been lucky enough to work across the community, and political divide, with some fantastic people.’ He added that Rishi Sunak would always have his ‘full support’, and concluded: ‘To both the next MP for Bexhill and Battle and to a future Rail Minister – if these roles bring even half the amount of happiness as they have brought me, then it will make you very proud.’

It is 09.00 on Friday 5 July 2024. The decision has been taken by the people, and two large removal vans arrived in Downing Street an hour ago. Rishi Sunak is expected to travel to the country house of Chequers in Buckinghamshire, which is customarily put at the temporary disposal of an outgoing Prime Minister. Sir Keir Rodney Starmer is preparing to get into a car which will take him to Buckingham Palace within the hour, where the King, also according to custom, will ask him to form a government. From that moment, the Labour leader will become Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. Meanwhile, newly-arrived officials in the Department for Transport, some of whom are a little bleary-eyed after sitting up late to watch the election results, are carrying out the instructions to be followed in the event of a Labour win. Messages go out from the DfT to Network Rail, the Office of Rail and Road, the Rail Delivery Group and the Great British Railways Transition Team. Each organisation is told that morning that they must start preparing for substantial changes to the railway industry. The DfT, Operator of Last Resort and Network Rail are being instructed to work closely together from now on by forming a partnership which is to be led by a new team at the temporary headquarters of the shadow Great British Railways, alongside Derby station. They must have a functioning organisation within six months – in other words, by January 2025. Meanwhile, Parliamentary draughtsmen have been working on a new Railways Bill, which will be presented to the Commons in the first session of the new Parliament.  The draft Railway Reform Bill drawn up by the previous government is now dead in the water: no public Bills, whether draft or substantive, survive a change of government, even though the Transport Select Committee had been conscientiously taking evidence about it from key railway industry figures in May. Whatever they said, as well as the text of the Bill itself, will now be placed in the box labelled ‘It Might Have Been’. Labour’s new Bill will be different. Great British Railways will not be the ‘franchising authority’, because there will be no franchises to be awarded. It will not be a ‘guiding mind’, as recommended by Keith Williams in his Rail Review, but a ‘directing’ one. Shares in several transport groups have been falling since the the Stock Exchange opened at 07.00 this morning, as it is now beyond doubt that the present National Rail passenger contracts in England will be terminated at the first available ‘break point’, and earlier than that if an operator ‘fails to deliver’. In Scotland and Wales there are none to surrender: the devolved governments had already taken control of their railways while the Conservative were still in office. There will be no chance of continuing, because the train operators still in the private sector on election day are destined to be ‘folded in’ to Great British Railways. The process is intended to be inexpensive and relatively painless. Behind closed doors, even before Sir Keir has reached the palace, some transport group executives are discussing at hastily-called meetings whether it would be better to surrender the doomed contracts sooner rather than later, and be done with it. Passenger open access offers one way for the private sector to stay on the rails, at least to some extent, and several transport groups have been industriously applying for new routes and paths over the past few months. Labour has said open access ‘will remain where it adds value and capacity to the rail network’.  But the Office of Rail and Road has yet to pronounce its verdicts on any of the recent applications, and before that happens it will have received ‘an updated framework and guidance’ about open access from the new transport secretary. No one knows what form that ‘guidance’ will take.

Another operator is bidding to expand the range of open access services. Arriva, which owns Grand Central, says an application has been submitted to the Office of Rail and Road to run two additional daily return services between Bradford and London, with up to eight intermediate station calls. This would bring the daily total of trains on the route to six. It is also proposing to run a new early morning York-London journey, with a return working in the late evening, as well as providing four new daily calls on its Sunderland route at Seaham in County Durham, which would give the town direct London trains for the first time. Arriva UK managing director David Brown said: ‘These proposals would bring more services and choice to passengers, building on the success of Grand Central’s open access operations, which connect a number of under-served communities in both the North East and West Yorkshire to London. This is a growth opportunity for the railway and a positive development for passengers and for our colleagues at Grand Central. By delivering additional services through open access, we can encourage more train travel, which is good for the environment and for communities, helping to ensure Britain’s rail system can thrive long into the future.’ The move by Arriva to expand Grand Central follows several other open access developments in recent months. Grand Union has already gained a licence to run between London and Carmarthen, but on 7 March the ORR approved another application from GU, this time between London Euston and Stirling via Larbert, Greenfaulds and Whifflet. A week later, Alstom and SLC Rail submitted an open access proposal to the ORR for services between London, Shropshire and Wrexham, recalling the former Wrexham and Shropshire operation but using London Euston rather than Marylebone, approaching London on the West Coast Main Line from Nuneaton and Milton Keynes. On 17 May FirstGroup unveiled plans for more open access services on the West Coast Main Line between Rochdale and London Euston, which would also be branded Lumo. There would be six daily return journeys. The latest development until Arriva’s proposals had been an application from Virgin for new services from London Euston to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. The Conservatives are in favour of private sector rail operators in general, while Labour has said that if it is elected open access services would continue, but potentially under new guidance to the ORR from the transport secretary.

Images of a new station in Liverpool which will contribute to Mayor Steve Rotheram’s target of reaching net zero by 2035 in the Liverpool City Region have been published. The computer generated images show how the £100 million station at Liverpool Baltic will look. The project was to be completed by 2028, but the Mayor has committed himself to opening it in 2027. As well as the new images, a virtual reality walkthrough is to be unveiled ‘within weeks’, and a two-month public consultation will start in June. The new station is one of four planned by the Mayor. The others are at Daresbury in Halton, Woodchurch on the Wirral and Carr Mill in St Helens. Work to develop all three should be underway by the end of this decade. Steve Rotheram, who was re-elected earlier this month, said: ‘Since I have been Mayor, I have worked around the clock to ensure our area has better connectivity so that people get to enjoy a reliable, accessible, affordable and integrated public transport network that helps, rather than hinders people getting around. ‘There are some unique challenges with the design of the site given that the station platform is subterranean. However, these plans for Liverpool Baltic further demonstrate our ambitions for the future of public transport in our area – a modern, fully accessible network with state-of-the-art infrastructure that unlocks opportunities for people and businesses.’ Plans for Liverpool Baltic include step-free access from the street to trains, passenger waiting areas, accessible toilets, secured monitored cycle parking and links to an improved local active travel network.

Virgin Group has confirmed reports that it has applied to the Office of Rail and Road for open access rights on the West Coast Main Line. The move comes only days after FirstGroup, which owns the majority of Avanti West Coast, said it was applying to run open access services between Rochdale and London. Virgin lost its long-running Intercity West Coast operation in 2019, when it was barred, along with Stagecoach, from bidding for the replacement contract in a dispute with the Department for Transport in a dispute over the liability of train operators for railway pension deficits. The new franchise was won by a consortium of FirstGroup amd Trenitalia, trading as Avanti West Coast, which was launched in December 2019. Virgin’s plans are the most ambitious ever proposed by a potential open access operator, because it wants to run between London, Birmingham and Manchester, and also to Liverpool and Glasgow, offering hourly services to most of those cities and two-hourly to Glasgow. It would also serve Rochdale. It is said to be planning to use ‘ten carriage’ trains, although nothing more has been said about where they would come from or how they would be funded or powered, or if they could be newly-built. The Office of Rail and Road will consider the proportion of revenue abstraction from existing operators with government contracts. Any abstraction would mainly affect Avanti West Coast, but London Northwestern and Chiltern Railways could also lose business between London and Birmingham. It is also not clear whether enough paths would be available on the congested West Coast Main Line, particularly through the West Midlands and south of Rugby, but one report claims that Virgin would be applying to take over some paths now held by Avanti West Coast on two routes. If true, this would be the first time that paths have been transferred from a contracted operator to an open access operation. Virgin Group is quoted as saying that the application is ‘just the first step towards exploring what might be possible’, adding: ‘We’re confident customers would welcome Virgin Trains back, providing them with much-needed choice and competition.’ Labour has said that if it is elected the operators with National Rail Contracts, who used to hold franchises, would be ‘folded’ into state-owned Great British Railways as their contracts expire, but it has not said it would end open access passenger operations. However, it also said that the Office of Rail and Road would ‘make approval decisions on open access applications on the basis of an updated framework and guidance issued by the Secretary of State’.

FirstGroup has unveiled plans to provide open access services between Rochdale and London. First already runs open access services from Hull and Edinburgh, and says the trains for the new service will be built in Britain. An application has been submitted to the Office of Rail and Road to provide six daily return journeys between Rochdale and London, calling at Manchester Victoria ,Eccles, Newton-le-Willows and Warrington Bank Quay. Some of the intermediate stations would also be convenient for other places, such as Eccles for other parts of Salford, and Newton-le-Willows for St Helens. A consultation period will now follow, as well as discussions with Network Rail. If the application is successful, the service could start in 2027. FirstGroup chief executive officer Graham Sutherland said: ‘We have extensive experience of running open access rail operations and we want to bring our successful Lumo service to this new route that connects Rochdale and London. ‘We have seen the level of growth and opportunity that is possible with open access, as well as the positive effect it has on the wider market, including economic and environmental benefits. In addition, the new service will help to drive modal shift from road to rail between the North West and London. We will be working closely with stakeholders as we build our application and our case for this new service.’

Southeastern has shortlisted five train builders as it begins planning a new or upgraded fleet for its Metro services. They are currently operated by Class 465 Networkers built between 1991 and 1994 for British Rail. The named suppliers are Alstom, CAF, Hitachi, Siemens and Stadler. Both Alstom at Derby and Hitachi in County Durham have been on the danger list in recent months, because of a shortage of new orders. Rail minister Huw Merriman wrote to the industry at the end of January, in which he set out potential rolling stock upgrades at several operators, including nationalised Southeastern, Northern and TransPennine Express. Most contracts were not expected until 2025, but Southeastern was mentioned as a possible front runner, with a contract possibly awarded in December this year. Southeastern’s Class 465s provide Metro services which link several London termini with south-east London and parts of Kent, including Dartford, Sevenoaks, Grove Park and Gillingham. There are said to be several options, including new trains, cascades or refurbishing the current fleet. Various improvements include making trains more accessible, providing brighter and more spacious interiors, air conditioning, improved information, greater reliability and the introduction of batteries to provide emergency traction and also for possible use within depots. Huw Merriman said: ‘This is great news for the rail manufacturing industry and forms part of an estimated £3.6 billion to support the sector in the coming years. ‘This Government continues to back rail manufacturers and today’s announcement demonstrates the UK market is a strong one, supporting high skilled jobs and boosting the economy right across the country.’ Southeastern added that it is ‘too early’ to confirm specific designs or principles.

Apprentices Open access operator Lumo has announced that 19 out of 20 employees with the firm began their railway careers as apprentices, following a five-year partnership between Lumo and railway trainers Train’d Up. Lumo said that 78 drivers and other train staff had been successfully enrolled. The United Kingdom has seen the number of apprenticeships rise by 2.5 per cent over the past year.   Station name The name of a new station on the Dartmoor Line between Exeter and Okehampton has been decided. When passenger services were restored west of Crediton in November 2021 it was already known that an additional station was proposed on the outskirts of Okehampton, tentatively called Okehampton Parkway. Since regular train services were launched passenger figures have been well above expectations, and the original two-hourly frequency was later doubled to hourly. The name of the new station, costing around £13 million and funded by the Government’s Levelling-Up scheme, has now been confirmed as Okehampton Interchange. It will have a larger car park and better bus services than the existing station near Okehampton town centre.

Cleanliness condemnation The RMT is accusing train operators of failing to maintain proper cleaning standards, because of ‘alarming deficiences’ among cleaning contractors. The union said it has surveyed 800 cleaners, and that 75 per cent say their workload has ‘surged’ since they started their jobs, 80 per cent feel compelled to cut corners because of ‘overwhelming pressure’, and that 85 per cent often come under pressure to take on additional tasks. Safety strategy The Rail Safety and Standards Board has published an updated Rail Health and Safety Strategy, pointing out that although railways in Britain are among the safest in the world, they are not risk-free. The RSSB said the industry is facing ‘significant challenges’ in cost, performance and reliability. The new strategy aims to help the railway cope with these, with the aim of having the world's healthiest and safest railway. Levenmouth opening The return of passenger trains to Leven and Methil on the east coast of Scotland will be celebrated with an official opening led by First Minister John Swinney on 29 May. He confirmed the arrangements during a preview visit to the line’s intermediate station at Cameron Bridge on Friday, where he also met some of the project delivery staff and young graduates employed on the project.