As part of the recent general election manifesto, bringing train companies back into public ownership was a key promise made by the current government.. The next company to be brought back under public control will be Greater Anglia.
Greater Anglia Trains at Stansted Airport – Image, Greater Anglia.
Greater Anglia operates trains out of London Liverpool Street, with express services to Norwich and Stansted Airport, Commuter services to Cambridge, Ipswich, Colchester, Chelmsford and regional services from Ipswich and Norwich, as well as coastal lines to Clacton, Southend, Harwich, Felixstowe, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth
The train company will be passed into government control on 12th October 2025. It will join LNER, Northern, TransPennine Express, Caledonian Sleeper, Scotrail, Transport for Wales (trains) and Southern, which are currently in government ownership.
Both South West Trains (which operates trains from London Waterloo to Reading, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, Weymouth and Exeter) and c2c (operating trains from London Fenchurch Street to the Essex Thameside to Southend and Shoeburyness) are also due to be moved back into public ownership during this year.
During the transfer from Transport Group UK (ex Abellio) and Mitsui & Co., Ltd, all train services, timetables and station facilities are unaffected by the transition, with no changes to ticket validities or conditions of carriage.
Employees’ roles are also unaffected, as they will all transfer across into the publicly owned company, whilst the current owners of the franchise promise to ensure a smooth transition to public ownership and have both the plans and expertise in place to deliver this outcome
In Quotes
Martin Beable, Managing Director, Greater Anglia, 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.”
Edging towards Great British Railways
Whilst Great British Railways (the final “brand” of the UK Rail network) edges towards life and operations, the government is keen to follow through with its plans to try to save money by not paying companies to operate services on its behalf, thus bringing passenger operations and infrastructure under one roof.
It should be noted that this transfers the company and its assets, as well as the leases on the rolling stock (Greater Anglia operates the Bombardier/Alston Aventra Class 720 EMU, Stadler FLIRT Class 745 (for Norwich and Stansted services) and Stadler FLIRT Class 755 Bi-Mode Units
We are not going to cover the history of rail franchising on this blog (there’s a good article on Wikipedia about the privatisation process, as well as passenger franchising) – but it’s something that needs to be looked at as train operating companies come into the fold and franchises are terminated.
Will it lead to trains being on time or at peak hour? Of course not.
But it could lead to joined up thinking, rather than everyone in silos working on their own solutions for the railways.
Well. We can hope.
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