Date Greater Anglia will be nationalised is confirmed

Greater Anglia (GA) will be taken over by the Department for Transport Operations Ltd (DFTO) on October 12.

The government announced late last year that GA would be the third train operator to be nationalised, after South Western Railway on May 25 and c2c on July 20, but had only given a date of autumn 2025.

GA has been run by Transport UK since it completed a management buyout of Abellio (which had operated the franchise and later National Rail Contract since 2012) in 2023.

Managing Director, Martin Beable, said: “I am very proud of what we have achieved here in East Anglia over the past thirteen years, significantly improving standards, investing in a complete fleet of new trains, and working closely with the local community.

"As we transition to a publicly owned railway, we remain focussed on delivering outstanding levels of service for our passengers.”

GA has said train services, timetables and station facilities are unaffected by the transition. The same applies to employees’ roles.

Speaking to RAIL earlier this year, Beable said he was hoping for “earned autonomy” once GA joined DFTO.

“I think direction of travel is likely to be ‘earned autonomy gives better results’, therefore giving TOCs that are performing well and delivering on their budget and performance commitments and revenue commitments, giving them autonomy to go about doing an increasingly better job. I hope that’s the way things are going,” he told RAIL.

Transport UK expressed its disappointment that it would be losing the GA operation in five months’ time.

A spokesperson said the government had “valid options for which operator to nationalise next”, adding: “We are also concerned that this decision creates unnecessary risk, such as slowing the pace of service improvements and jeopardising taxpayer revenue, given that Great British Railways has yet to be established, and its functions currently fall to the temporary DfT Operator.”

However, it committed to a smooth transition.

GA, the winner of the National Rail Awards’ prestigious Passenger Operator of the Year category in 2022 and 2024, recently completed two years as the UK’s best performing train operator.

Annual performance in the 12 months to March 31 recorded a punctuality figure of 94.1%, with seven routes topping 95%.

No announcement has been made as to which of the remaining seven privately run train operating companies will be nationalised next.

In December, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told Parliament in a written statement: “Following Greater Anglia, the programme will continue with the transfer of one operator’s services roughly every three months.

“We expect these to follow the order in which operators’ current contractual minimum terms expire unless a TOC defaults on its contract to the extent that there is a contractual right to terminate (in which case it will transfer as soon as reasonably practicable) or other extenuating circumstances arise.”

West Midlands Trains’ core term ended in September 2024, though the full term runs until September 2026.

Operators with core terms ending in 2025 include Chiltern (April 1), Govia Thameslink Railway (April 1) and Great Western Railway (June 22), with full-term deals running until December 12 2027, April 1 2028 and June 25 2028 respectively.

East Midlands Railway’s core term ends on October 18 2026, with a full-term end date of October 18 2030, with Avanti West Coast’s core and full-term dates ending in October 18 2026 and October 17 2032 respectively. CrossCountry has the last core-term end date of October 17 2027 and a full-term end date of October 12 2031.