Louise Haigh gives indication of when first train operators to be taken over by government will be announced

The first private train operator to be brought back under state control could be known within weeks.

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh was asked by House of Commons Transport Committee chair, Ruth Cadbury, which would be the first operators to be moved to public operation.

She told MPs on Wednesday that an announcement would be made when the Railways Bill, currently going through the House of Lords, receives Royal Assent.

“We will announce at Royal Assent which will be the first operator to be served with its three-month notice and brought into public ownership, but we expect all services currently operated by private operators to be brought into public operation over the next three years,” she said.

Haigh said that out of the ten private operators, two have contract expiry dates of May and July 2025 with the other eight having core-term expiry dates ranging from September 2024 to October 2027.

While she did not name the operators with contracts due to expire next year, South Western Railway and c2c’s deals are set to finish in May and July respectively.

The Department for Transport’s Operator of Last Resort currently runs London North Eastern Railway, Northern, Southeastern and TransPennine Express.

Haigh described the quartet as “not a great sample”, saying they were already performing poorly when taken over by the government. She said LNER was “doing well now” after localised disputes were resolved, while TransPennine Express cancellations had been “substantially reduced”.

“But we know Northern isn’t performing as well as it should,” Haigh admitted, adding that when the remaining operators are brought into public operation, the government will “balance operational considerations as well as the benefit to the taxpayer and how they are performing”.

DfT OLR Holdings Limited (DOHL), which will act as the owning company, will be doubling its capacity by January and again by December 2025 to “ensure it has sufficient people and expertise to manage the number of private operators that are coming in”.