In November 2024, Rail Partners and its founding members – the owning groups of passenger train companies – took the decision to wind down our organisation at the end of this financial year. Our last day is 21 March 2025.  

Rail Partners was established by its passenger owning group members following the 2021 Williams Plan for Rail which set out a vision for a renewed public-private partnership on the railway. The mission statement of Rail Partners was simple – to make the railway better by harnessing the expertise of private sector operators to achieve outcomes that the public sector could not achieve alone as quickly or efficiently.   

But the prevailing winds of political change have proved impossible to weather. Following the general election last year, the passing of The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act means, in contrast to the Williams Plan, the new government has legislated to nationalise DfT-contracted train operations. During the legislative process, Rail Partners made the views of its members clear, that simply changing who runs the trains will not in itself fix the challenges the railway is facing. It is a political rather than practical solution. But the course is set.  

I hope that the recently launched consultation and subsequent Rail Reform Bill coming later this year, will create a framework that delivers a better service for customers and provides certainty and clarity for the future, even if Rail Partners won’t be part of it. But there are still some big questions that have to be answered about how the Government, now that it has assumed direct responsibility for Britain’s railways, will improve performance for passengers and lower the burden for taxpayers.  

First, without the incentives on private sector passenger operators in the system, what will replace that to drive growth and reduce subsidy?   

Just bringing together track and train is not sufficient on its own – a new culture will be needed. The railway has no right to exist, and is now permanently in competition with other public services for limited public funds. If we don’t innovate to reduce the burden on the taxpayer to free up funding, how will GBR ultimately improve reliability when additional public investment is likely to be scarce?   

Similarly, over the years the balance of funding has tipped towards customers paying more and taxpayers less but, when competing with working from home, the ticket price is an increasingly important factor in individual decision making. Without innovation to reduce cost, how can fares be kept affordable in a way that helps attract people back on to the railway?   

Secondly, the government has said that Open Access and freight operations will still play a significant role in supporting better economic, social and environmental outcomes for Britain. What safeguards will be in place to protect the investments from these non-GBR operators when GBR will be both an operator itself and the referee on access?   

If we don’t get the balance right, we will see Open Access wither on the vine and freight operators increasingly unable to attract new customers away from more polluting road haulage.  

And perhaps the biggest set of questions, sitting behind all those others, is how we give customers what they want – freight users and passengers – by bringing decisions closer to them. Will government let GBR truly operate at arms-length? Can GBR itself be decentralised? And while there is a political consensus on devolution, can GBR meaningfully empower local leaders at the same time as running a more integrated national network?   

I hope that some of the materials and evidence that Rail Partners has produced over the past three years continue to contribute to, and stimulate, discussion as the more substantial areas of reform are worked through.  

Over the past three years, Rail Partners has advocated not only for its private sector members, but also for the future success of the industry as a whole. We have used evidence-based policy to hold successive governments to account and contributed to the important debates and challenges facing our industry – whether they be macro policy questions or technical conundrums facing train operators.   

I am particularly proud of Rail Partners’ fundraising efforts to support colleagues in Ukraine. The ‘Rail Partners with Ukraine’ initiative raised over £105,000 to feed railway workers and their families and last summer this was supplemented by the ‘Kit for Kyiv’ campaign which has subsequently funded over £65,000 worth of Personal Protection Equipment, such as helmets and flak jackets, for Ukrainian colleagues on the front line. These fundraising initiatives weren’t part of the workplan, but the team was committed to doing the right thing and using their unique position to bring together train operators in support of our colleagues in Ukraine.   

As our organisation closes, to reflect on Rail Partners’ past three years, we have put together a video of highlights that you can watch below. I want to thank the team at Rail Partners for their efforts. And on behalf of everyone in that team, I want to thank all our members - owning groups, freight operators and train operating companies - and everyone from across the industry for their support and engagement over the past three years. The reform journey will continue and we wish our railway colleagues all the best.