Southeastern becomes South Eastern Railway

Passengers may not even notice the small name change, as Southeastern becomes South Eastern Railway. But track and train are now together under the leadership of Steve White, who talks to Paul Clifton.

Network Rail calls it a “streamlined structure”, promising a more responsive railway “with a common purpose and clear accountability for railway performance”.

“We’ve called ourselves the South Eastern Railway. There was an 1836 incarnation. We are the 2025 version of an integrated railway,” says Managing Director Steve White, considerably more eloquently than the official notice.

White is in the middle of a visit to “his” MPs at the House of Commons, and points out: “I now am personally accountable for track and train.”

The announcement attracted almost no attention. For unfathomable reasons known only to government, the new organisation was launched on the same day the Transport Secretary admitted to “wasted billions” and a headline-grabbing “litany of mistakes” over HS2.

Meanwhile, much of the rail industry flocked to its biggest trade show - Rail Live at Porterbrook’s Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre.

In practical terms, both Network Rail and the train operator have been in the public sector for years, Southeastern having transferred from Govia on October 17 2021.

The two sides have already been working together closely, claiming this has led to greater efficiency.

As evidence, they cite consistently low levels of cancellations, plus customer satisfaction scores among the highest at 86%. And, as music to HM Treasury’s ears, public subsidy to operate the trains is expected to fall by £50 million this year.

“I have a fully integrated leadership team,” White explains.

“We’ve put natural groupings of people together. Our operations director has drivers and signallers in the same department. Our safety, planning and performance director has timetable planning and engineering access planning in the same team for the first time in a generation.”

However, has anything really changed? South Eastern Railway is merely a contractual arrangement between Southeastern and Network Rail. No legal accountabilities are being transferred and each organisation remains responsible for decision-making about its own activities. There are no changes to any staff terms and conditions - they still work either for Network Rail or for the train operator.

That did not prevent the Department for Transport-approved hyperbole in the official announcement.

The arrival of South Eastern Railway “marks a significant milestone” (the same phrase applied when South Western Railway returned to the public sector on May 25), “with the sole purpose of delivering for passengers” (whatever that means).

“This new integrated, collaborative approach across the South East sets the path for how GBR will operate.”

Those words were attributed to Network Rail, but it’s safe to say they were concocted by officials at the DfT.

“South Eastern Railway is not an employer,” White says.

“It is not a legal entity. Technically, it’s a non-incorporated joint venture. 1,800 people work for Network Rail Kent. 4,800 people work for Southeastern. But all 6,600 are part of South Eastern Railway. If you’re a passenger, you still buy a ticket from Southeastern - that hasn’t changed. But we’re a common brand to our stakeholders, to MPs.”

Network Rail (let’s just skip the pretence and say ‘ministerial aides’) stated that joint planning with the train operator has led to reduced delays. This includes enabling track access during the day to carry out repairs more efficiently.

Although there has been no timetable recast, it is also claimed that “more joined-up working also means matching trains to when passengers want to take them, delivering at least £3 million a year in additional revenue.”

Evidence? How will success be measured?

“The most overt changes are putting drivers and signallers in the same team, getting fleet and track engineering working more closely together,” White replies.

“We will expect to see performance improve and subsidy reduce. They are the two primary measures of success.

“Both organisations believe in social mobility. We both run programmes with young people. We want to improve performance, but in a purposeful way, making a railway which is better for our communities.”

How will the new arrangement differ from what is being created at South Western Railway and Network Rail’s Wessex route, under new Managing Director Lawrence Bowman? Or, in years gone by, in Tim Shoveller’s “deep alliance” on Waterloo services between Network Rail and Stagecoach’s South West Trains? Or what Alex Hynes achieved at ScotRail?

“Lawrence will create a similar version in Wessex,” says White.

“I’ve had long conversations with Tim Shoveller. That alliance did not include two public sector organisations. It was a similar concept but in a different era. The alliance in Scotland isn’t as integrated as we have down here.

“We’ve been working in an alliance since October 2023. We had dotted-line reporting - a virtual team. We ran as two separate businesses, meeting a couple of times a month.

“Now we’re moving from managing the interfaces to managing the railway as a whole. The same team will look at the revenue, the customer satisfaction, the state of the track maintenance backlog, and the fleet reliability.”

Key to that will be new rolling stock. Southeastern’s Networker trains, built for British Rail, are getting close to life-expired.

“We have bids in from manufacturers. We will evaluate those and then go for best-and-final-offer. I would expect that early next year. It’s a sequential process. The Networkers are 33 years old, and it will take several years to replace them.

“Before, we had someone responsible for maintenance of the fleet of 400 trains that we use every day, as well as procurement of new trains and delivery of some major projects.

“I’ve split that role in two, so we now have a major programmes and fleet strategy director to focus on completing the procurement of our metro fleet and developing longer-term plans for the main line and high-speed routes, where we will also want additional capacity.”

It’s clear that the new railway structure for Kent will become a template for other parts of the country to follow. Pending legislation to create Great British Railways, the joint venture will be more than a local geographical solution to a specific problem.

After more than 30 years on the railway, White appears genuinely excited by the challenge: “We describe ourselves as the first of a new era of integrated railway under public ownership. It doesn’t just come together at my level - it comes together at departmental level.

“We join together organisationally, but we also join together digitally. All my colleagues share data. So, people at Network Rail can see how many passengers are travelling and how much they are paying, where they are satisfied, and where the routes are growing. And the train team will see the state of the infrastructure and where work has to be done.

“We join together culturally. For example, we are the train operator that has given the most daytime access to Network Rail colleagues this summer, because the team have come to us to explain why it is needed.

“The Hastings line of route is worth over £100m a year. 80% of the revenue on it is north of Tunbridge Wells, and it is growing at an annual rate of 7%. We tell Network Rail that. All of a sudden, they can see how what they do translates into the effect on travellers as well as the effect on profit and loss. They can make better decisions.

“South Eastern Railway has 15 lines of route. We know the revenue and passenger numbers on each one. If we target the Network Rail investment to support the busiest and fastest-growing lines of route, following the money, we should get a better return, improve performance and reduce subsidy.

“We have someone called Daisy, who has all our revenue data. People are reaching out to her, asking for the data on how busy we are on a Tuesday peak compared with a Monday peak, or which lines are growing fastest, or asking how many people would be affected if we have a problem at 1700 on a Wednesday.

“All this is available to curious people at Network Rail, who are now seeing the whole picture rather than just their piece of the jigsaw. It’s a step-change. We are very optimistic that we can run a better railway.”

But White does finish with a note of everyday realism: “The first time I was in charge of an integrated railway, I was on London Underground, the sub-surface lines. On my first day, we had a catastrophic signal failure. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

“Launching South Eastern Railway, we took [Rail Minister] Lord Hendy down to Hither Green to show what we were doing together. Then we had a bridge strike and a points failure.

“There is a real world out there! But we have been building trust for a couple of years now, and we are starting to see our people finding new ways of tackling old problems.”