Most of Great Britain’s major rail operators are back in public hands – is it working?

The majority of Great Britain’s major rail operators are now in public ownership, as the Labour government continues its efforts to make the railways “more reliable, affordable and accessible”.

The nationalisation of Govia Thameslink on 31 May represents the eleventh major passenger service to be brought back into public ownership, leaving five to go before the government’s deadline of completing every operator by 2027.

The rollout, which is resulting in an operator being nationalised roughly every three months, is gradually bringing an end to a privatised system that critics argue has been overly fragmented and focused on profit, to the detriment of passenger experience.

Several operators were already under public ownership by the time Labour were elected in 2024, having been nationalised by the Conservatives over financial woes and poor performance.

Meanwhile, Transport for Wales and ScotRail were each nationalised by the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments, in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

However, under the current transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, the Department for Transport (DfT) has accelerated the pace of nationalisation, bringing five operators on to the public books since May 2025: South Western Railway, C2C, Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains and Govia Thameslink.

The nationalisations come ahead of the establishment of a new state-controlled company called Great British Railways, expected this year, which will manage rail infrastructure and services.

It has been described by the DfT as a “single directing mind” for “bringing track and train together, putting passengers and customers first, [and] rebuilding trust in the railway”.

It will soon manage most of the publicly owned operators in Great Britain, combining them with Network Rail, which owns the tracks, signals and big stations.

However, Great Britain’s trains will remain privately owned.

Industry insiders have expressed cautious optimism about Labour’s plans, highlighting the potential for Great British Railways to achieve more coordination and, in turn, greater efficiency.

However, experts have also warned that nationalisation alone may not be enough to fix all of Britain’s problems with rail, given ballooning costs.

“Irrespective of the ownership changes, the government’s got a major headache with the fact that rail is gobbling up so much public subsidy, and that’s before you get to HS2,” said Stephen Glaister, the emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and a former chair of the Office of Rail and Road.

“The government are making promises to make fares even cheaper and services even better, but both will cost more public money.”

The data available on nationalised operators so far offers a mixed picture on performance.

Several have experienced improving train punctuality and a reduction in cancellations but the performance of others has worsened over the past year.

LNER has been one of the most improved – and in June the rail minister, Peter Hendy, described the operator as a “blueprint” for wider renationalisation efforts.

When will the next operators be nationalised?

Labour committed to bringing rail into public ownership in the party’s 2024 election manifesto – claiming it had come up with a way to nationalise trains “without costing taxpayers a penny in compensation”.

Instead of an “all-at-once” approach, nationalising every operator simultaneously and paying off shareholders, the government is running down the clock on existing rail contracts.

The DfT is waiting for each operator’s core contract expiry date, which allows the government to take over without compensating the private companies.

The final operator to expire in this way will be CrossCountry in October 2027 – and this is when the government says it will have completed rail nationalisation in Great Britain.

Until then, the government has set a pace of nationalising one operator in each annual quarter. Chiltern Railways is due next, in September 2026.

This post was originally published on this site.