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The UK government plans to take South Western Railway into public ownership in May, in the first nationalisation of the country’s passenger rail network under Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour administration.
Ministers will step in once the contract held by FirstGroup and MTR to run the SWR network expires in May, the government said on Wednesday.
Control of the operator will be handed to the Operator of Last Resort, a public body that runs nationalised trains on behalf of the government.
The OLR will next year be renamed DfT Operator Limited.
SWR is one of the UK’s largest operators and runs commuter services into London Waterloo as well as serving a large part of south-west England. The Financial Times first reported the government’s plans on Tuesday.
The company that runs commuter lines between London and Essex, c2c, will follow by July 2025, and then Greater Anglia, which has routes from London to the east of England, in autumn 2025.
“For too long, the British public have had to put up with rail services which simply don’t work. A complex system of private train operators has too often failed its users,” transport secretary Heidi Alexander said.
Labour promised to renationalise rail operators as their contracts expire, with a plan to bring the whole passenger network into public ownership this decade.
Alexander’s decision to start with SWR represents a more cautious approach than that under her predecessor Louise Haigh, who resigned last week.
Haigh had drawn up plans to exercise a break clause to nationalise Greater Anglia or West Midlands Railway as soon as February, people familiar with the matter said.
Industry and government officials had warned that this plan carried serious risk of legal action from their owner, Transport UK.
Haigh resigned from government on Friday after admitting she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence over a missing mobile phone.
The Labour government’s flagship “public ownership bill” received Royal Assent and became law last week, ending the privatisation era of the British railway that began in 1994.
Under the law, contracts to run train operators, which are let to private companies, will be permanently returned to the government as they expire.
About 40 per cent of services are already being run by the Operator of Last Resort, after four failing services in England including the East Coast main line and TransPennine Express were taken over by the previous Conservative government.
Scottish and Welsh railways are already run by their devolved governments.
Ministers plan to bring in new legislation next year to further reform the industry and hand control of the operators to a new public body — Great British Railways — which will unite track and train for the first time since British Rail disappeared.
Dominic Booth, CEO of Transport UK, which operates four train companies including Greater Anglia, said he was surprised to see that company on the list of those first to be nationalised, calling it “the best train operator for both the passenger and the taxpayer”.
“That said, we look forward to constructive dialogue with government at the appropriate time,” he added.
Speaking last week, SWR’s managing director Stuart Meek said the company’s management was “committed to working with the government”.
“Our job at South Western Railway is to deliver a good service for our customers and our communities . . . what we are actually really excited about is the government’s plan for rail travel to be top of the agenda,” he told reporters.
Though welcomed by unions, the government’s plans were criticised by the private sector.
“Simply changing who runs the trains won’t deliver more reliable and affordable services for passengers, reduce subsidy for taxpayers or grow rail freight,” said Andy Bagnall, chief executive of industry lobby group Rail Partners.
This article has been amended to correct an earlier headline