Train operators transferring into public ownership have haughtily been told ‘earn the right’ to carry a brand hasn’t delivered anything
“Operators must meet rigorous, bespoke standards to earn the right to be called Great British Railways, so we can rebuild a world-class public service”.
What? You’re having a laugh, surely? Yes, in the recent celebratory press release from the Department for Transport to announce the timeline for West Midlands Trains, Govia Thameslink Railway and Chiltern and
Great Western Railway services to transfer to the public sector, this sentence attracted derision and caused confusion among many readers – and this wasn’t just because those operators are actually pretty well regarded.
For starters, who are operators? I thought in the new unified, single-entity railway, there was no such thing as operators – isn’t everyone the same? Are operators a department, a company, or a group of folk playing trains?
And if you aren’t an operator, what are you?
The key question, though, asked by a guffawing audience was what happens if ‘operators’ don’t meet this standard? Perhaps it will be like the Chelsea Football Club training ground and the inglorious ‘Bomb Squad’, the phrase used to describe footballers deemed not to be performing and not to fit the manager’s plans. They have to train in isolation or with the apprentices.
It’s all fine and dandy. Witness the mutual ‘welcome to the gang’ style ‘love in’ on LinkedIn that currently ensues between DfTO top brass when each operator joins the family (pass the sick bag), but you can imagine that backslapping gaiety dissipating when the going gets tough and there are one or two that are on the naughty step? Jealousy, bitterness, backstabbing, mirth and acrimony will ensue, and it will be interesting to watch. Who will be first in the sin bin and stripped of the GBR title? Will the bookies take odds?
If operators are already publicly owned, then where will they go if cut adrift from the fold? Will it be like the NHS or state education system, where operators are placed in special measures and experienced industry professionals parachuted in?
For customers, though, it may seem weird travelling on a train they know that has been blacklisted from the fold. And it may be incendiary too – soliciting opprobrium, stigma and disrespect among customers if they know that the company they are using is in the doghouse. Over the years, I’ve seen the media unfairly whip up a maelstrom of antipathy and fury among customers towards a so-called ‘Misery Line’, with it fast becoming fashionable to slate a company or route for over-exaggerated shortcomings completely. It’s worse these days with verbal and physical assaults on staff particularly high, and a sense among many that it’s ‘fair game’ to be obnoxious and worse towards those representing a company that is deemed to be atrocious when it comes to customer service.
Before the GBR brand is treated as though it is sacrosanct, it needs to build some equity in the first place. It, not the operators, need to ‘earn the right’ to talk about itself as though it is some great brand. Indeed, successful brands are those that have created a legacy – Virgin (remember when they ran trains – it was brilliant), Southwest Airlines, John Lewis, Disney and Apple are those that spring to mind initially. GBR can’t just turn up as a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ and think it’s a top brand. Legacy brands are companies that have eschewed customer-centricity for many years, earning the trust and admiration of customers. Currently, GBR is just a logo that has appeared on the side of a few trains. It’s not been seen in marketing campaigns or anything beyond being slightly ham-fistedly, superimposed without any blending of colour on rolling stock exteriors that are home to a completely different brand. Indeed, the GBR brand would appear not to have a brand personality or family of brands yet – it may have this, of course, but it’s been fairly secretive.
It’s arrogant to suggest that the brand has some kind of resonance and value at such an early stage. Indeed, this overinflated sense of virtue and importance might be moderately justified if the developers and exponents of the brand had a track record of success, or if the model within which the brand is enacted had proven to deliver results. First time round, nationalisation had some success, but the British Rail brand did not command the level of respect and value that those customer-centric brands I mentioned earlier did. In fact, and this will upset some old timers, it was regarded by many as a laughing stock.
The DfT’s reference to a ‘rebuild’ of ‘a world class public service’, was dim-witted because it made it look as though such a service existed in the first place. No amount of history re-creation will tell me this was ever the case. Across any sector in the UK, has there ever been anything remotely resembling a ‘world-class public service’? Of course not.
GBR can’t just turn up as a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ and think it’s a top brand
Can we even place trust in the competence of leadership to create the right standards in the first place, judge what constitutes good and bad performance, and have the right metrics to make a proper evaluation before sidelining an operator? We haven’t even had a proper customer satisfaction survey in place since Covid. Furthermore, a few rail industry leaders are spouting tripe on social media about how services are improving. You wonder if they are residing in a bubble or if they believe the louder they shout, the more they can convince us all that they aren’t talking cobblers.
The performance of the nationalised train companies has not been so poor that their own brands are a laughing stock, but maybe, with LNER excluded, there is a level of it being tainted. It was, at least, heartening that the announcement of the transfer of Greater Anglia from the private to the public sector was met with refreshing honesty in the press release and subsequent communications by the DfT, as well as Lord Hendy, who stated that it is indeed a beacon of excellence for others. Thank goodness there was an acceptance that this was a private-sector success story, rather than a blind re-creation of history. However, by acknowledging that it was a private business leading the way, the messaging around the sanctity of the GBR brand was undermined. There’s more equity in the Greater Anglia brand than GBR right now.
Of most interest in the DfT press release was this hint that the operators might indeed remain as entities in their own right, rather than being completely subsumed into the GBR monolith, retaining their own identity and management structure. Might these, therefore, be somewhat autonomous business units, allowed to reflect and respond to their individual market nuances and needs? If we are stripping one part of the railway of their right to wear the GBR shirts, are we thus suggesting that there will be a separate function running each area, route or service type, that can be easily identified as accountable and sent to boot camp to repent?
It does seem incongruous and slightly odd that a public sector organisation should have subsidiary-type, state-run entities beneath it that have to meet certain standards, through fear of being punished, in whatever shape or form. Indeed, the rhetoric from the press release seemed almost macho and demanding, the kind we associate with the private sector. The closest I have come to this environment was when I ran the Wales and Borders region for Royal Mail, not long before privatisation. We were one of nine regions, each with a senior leadership team of directors, overseeing the regulated letters and parcels service nationwide. It was a fully integrated structure – the equivalent of track and train: the processing/mail centres and delivery offices! Anyway, we were autonomous businesses, and the regime was punishing. We lived and died by scorecards and league tables; leaders came and went based on their run of form, and I used to dread each month’s release of the period-end figures absolutely. There was a daily conference call, and if any of your mail centres had failed to dispatch all the post on time the previous night, you’d be forced onto a call every day until you had a clean bill of health.
When I read the DfT press release and saw a slight glint that these will, indeed, be semi-independent businesses within an overarching structure, I felt moderately excited – more so than at any point since the concept of a nationalised railway was suggested. Could it be that these ‘companies’ will indeed be really close to the markets that they serve, and will it be that as suppliers to the industry or even stakeholders, we can pick and choose who we might want to work with and have a relationship with, rather than it being a ‘one size fits’ all matrix. Indeed, you can see and hear some of the older, nostalgic bods getting gleeful at the prospect of a re-run of the so-called heyday of sectorisation, where, from a customer perspective, marketing had a localised feel, but framed by national consistency and branding. Could common sense prevail? After all, the railway serves communities, each with its own features, and some distant corporate HQ can’t best support them.
Structure will be important, of course, but it will – pardon the old adage – come down to people. If we have strong, selfless, level-headed, hard working, slightly charismatic but hugely experienced leaders at the top, focused on customers and local markets, then we should be alright. Outsiders looking into the sector lack respect for those in rail. Only last week, I had four separate conversations with those from other parts of transport, all complaining about the sheer lack of urgency from middle-to-senior-ranking railway managers and what they perceived as ‘sleepwalking’, ‘coasting’ and ‘taking the money’ without any risk of recourse. The industry needs to repair its reputation, which is seen by many as inhabited by overpaid, overinflated egos, unchallenged, and out of touch with reality.
Thankfully, it would seem, certainly in the case of the appointment of Jamie Burles to oversee the Eastern Region and Lawrence Bowman in the South West, that faith is being put in the success stories of privatisation, so too in Alex Hynes’ galvanising influence across all parts of the industry. For many, if not all, of the other TOC MDs, there should be a place at the heart of the new structure. Mark Hopwood, David Horne, Andy Mellors, Richard Allan, Steve White, Shiona Rolfe, Ian McConnell and so on, all should be given the keys to run the railway. So too, we need fresh blood – those on the ascendancy, outspoken mavericks, and, importantly, a more diverse senior leadership.
With Robin Gisby’s departure later this year as DfTO supremo, there is an opportunity for a new overall leader to come in, freshen things up and make their mark. Someone with experience in managing businesses in a more market-led, commercial environment than the current set-up of recent times and capable of getting all stakeholders behind them.
One last thought. If you believe the polls, the current government has never been more disliked – certainly not in my lifetime. If GBR takes until 2028 to be properly in situ, what happens if a few months later an election leads to a new party in power? The next few years could be a rollercoaster
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Earning the right to become GBR?
by Passenger Transport on Oct 31, 2025 • 12:27 pm No CommentsTrain operators transferring into public ownership have haughtily been told ‘earn the right’ to carry a brand hasn’t delivered anything
“Operators must meet rigorous, bespoke standards to earn the right to be called Great British Railways, so we can rebuild a world-class public service”.
What? You’re having a laugh, surely? Yes, in the recent celebratory press release from the Department for Transport to announce the timeline for West Midlands Trains, Govia Thameslink Railway and Chiltern and
Great Western Railway services to transfer to the public sector, this sentence attracted derision and caused confusion among many readers – and this wasn’t just because those operators are actually pretty well regarded.
For starters, who are operators? I thought in the new unified, single-entity railway, there was no such thing as operators – isn’t everyone the same? Are operators a department, a company, or a group of folk playing trains?
And if you aren’t an operator, what are you?
The key question, though, asked by a guffawing audience was what happens if ‘operators’ don’t meet this standard? Perhaps it will be like the Chelsea Football Club training ground and the inglorious ‘Bomb Squad’, the phrase used to describe footballers deemed not to be performing and not to fit the manager’s plans. They have to train in isolation or with the apprentices.
It’s all fine and dandy. Witness the mutual ‘welcome to the gang’ style ‘love in’ on LinkedIn that currently ensues between DfTO top brass when each operator joins the family (pass the sick bag), but you can imagine that backslapping gaiety dissipating when the going gets tough and there are one or two that are on the naughty step? Jealousy, bitterness, backstabbing, mirth and acrimony will ensue, and it will be interesting to watch. Who will be first in the sin bin and stripped of the GBR title? Will the bookies take odds?
If operators are already publicly owned, then where will they go if cut adrift from the fold? Will it be like the NHS or state education system, where operators are placed in special measures and experienced industry professionals parachuted in?
For customers, though, it may seem weird travelling on a train they know that has been blacklisted from the fold. And it may be incendiary too – soliciting opprobrium, stigma and disrespect among customers if they know that the company they are using is in the doghouse. Over the years, I’ve seen the media unfairly whip up a maelstrom of antipathy and fury among customers towards a so-called ‘Misery Line’, with it fast becoming fashionable to slate a company or route for over-exaggerated shortcomings completely. It’s worse these days with verbal and physical assaults on staff particularly high, and a sense among many that it’s ‘fair game’ to be obnoxious and worse towards those representing a company that is deemed to be atrocious when it comes to customer service.
Before the GBR brand is treated as though it is sacrosanct, it needs to build some equity in the first place. It, not the operators, need to ‘earn the right’ to talk about itself as though it is some great brand. Indeed, successful brands are those that have created a legacy – Virgin (remember when they ran trains – it was brilliant), Southwest Airlines, John Lewis, Disney and Apple are those that spring to mind initially. GBR can’t just turn up as a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ and think it’s a top brand. Legacy brands are companies that have eschewed customer-centricity for many years, earning the trust and admiration of customers. Currently, GBR is just a logo that has appeared on the side of a few trains. It’s not been seen in marketing campaigns or anything beyond being slightly ham-fistedly, superimposed without any blending of colour on rolling stock exteriors that are home to a completely different brand. Indeed, the GBR brand would appear not to have a brand personality or family of brands yet – it may have this, of course, but it’s been fairly secretive.
It’s arrogant to suggest that the brand has some kind of resonance and value at such an early stage. Indeed, this overinflated sense of virtue and importance might be moderately justified if the developers and exponents of the brand had a track record of success, or if the model within which the brand is enacted had proven to deliver results. First time round, nationalisation had some success, but the British Rail brand did not command the level of respect and value that those customer-centric brands I mentioned earlier did. In fact, and this will upset some old timers, it was regarded by many as a laughing stock.
The DfT’s reference to a ‘rebuild’ of ‘a world class public service’, was dim-witted because it made it look as though such a service existed in the first place. No amount of history re-creation will tell me this was ever the case. Across any sector in the UK, has there ever been anything remotely resembling a ‘world-class public service’? Of course not.
Can we even place trust in the competence of leadership to create the right standards in the first place, judge what constitutes good and bad performance, and have the right metrics to make a proper evaluation before sidelining an operator? We haven’t even had a proper customer satisfaction survey in place since Covid. Furthermore, a few rail industry leaders are spouting tripe on social media about how services are improving. You wonder if they are residing in a bubble or if they believe the louder they shout, the more they can convince us all that they aren’t talking cobblers.
The performance of the nationalised train companies has not been so poor that their own brands are a laughing stock, but maybe, with LNER excluded, there is a level of it being tainted. It was, at least, heartening that the announcement of the transfer of Greater Anglia from the private to the public sector was met with refreshing honesty in the press release and subsequent communications by the DfT, as well as Lord Hendy, who stated that it is indeed a beacon of excellence for others. Thank goodness there was an acceptance that this was a private-sector success story, rather than a blind re-creation of history. However, by acknowledging that it was a private business leading the way, the messaging around the sanctity of the GBR brand was undermined. There’s more equity in the Greater Anglia brand than GBR right now.
Of most interest in the DfT press release was this hint that the operators might indeed remain as entities in their own right, rather than being completely subsumed into the GBR monolith, retaining their own identity and management structure. Might these, therefore, be somewhat autonomous business units, allowed to reflect and respond to their individual market nuances and needs? If we are stripping one part of the railway of their right to wear the GBR shirts, are we thus suggesting that there will be a separate function running each area, route or service type, that can be easily identified as accountable and sent to boot camp to repent?
It does seem incongruous and slightly odd that a public sector organisation should have subsidiary-type, state-run entities beneath it that have to meet certain standards, through fear of being punished, in whatever shape or form. Indeed, the rhetoric from the press release seemed almost macho and demanding, the kind we associate with the private sector. The closest I have come to this environment was when I ran the Wales and Borders region for Royal Mail, not long before privatisation. We were one of nine regions, each with a senior leadership team of directors, overseeing the regulated letters and parcels service nationwide. It was a fully integrated structure – the equivalent of track and train: the processing/mail centres and delivery offices! Anyway, we were autonomous businesses, and the regime was punishing. We lived and died by scorecards and league tables; leaders came and went based on their run of form, and I used to dread each month’s release of the period-end figures absolutely. There was a daily conference call, and if any of your mail centres had failed to dispatch all the post on time the previous night, you’d be forced onto a call every day until you had a clean bill of health.
When I read the DfT press release and saw a slight glint that these will, indeed, be semi-independent businesses within an overarching structure, I felt moderately excited – more so than at any point since the concept of a nationalised railway was suggested. Could it be that these ‘companies’ will indeed be really close to the markets that they serve, and will it be that as suppliers to the industry or even stakeholders, we can pick and choose who we might want to work with and have a relationship with, rather than it being a ‘one size fits’ all matrix. Indeed, you can see and hear some of the older, nostalgic bods getting gleeful at the prospect of a re-run of the so-called heyday of sectorisation, where, from a customer perspective, marketing had a localised feel, but framed by national consistency and branding. Could common sense prevail? After all, the railway serves communities, each with its own features, and some distant corporate HQ can’t best support them.
Structure will be important, of course, but it will – pardon the old adage – come down to people. If we have strong, selfless, level-headed, hard working, slightly charismatic but hugely experienced leaders at the top, focused on customers and local markets, then we should be alright. Outsiders looking into the sector lack respect for those in rail. Only last week, I had four separate conversations with those from other parts of transport, all complaining about the sheer lack of urgency from middle-to-senior-ranking railway managers and what they perceived as ‘sleepwalking’, ‘coasting’ and ‘taking the money’ without any risk of recourse. The industry needs to repair its reputation, which is seen by many as inhabited by overpaid, overinflated egos, unchallenged, and out of touch with reality.
Thankfully, it would seem, certainly in the case of the appointment of Jamie Burles to oversee the Eastern Region and Lawrence Bowman in the South West, that faith is being put in the success stories of privatisation, so too in Alex Hynes’ galvanising influence across all parts of the industry. For many, if not all, of the other TOC MDs, there should be a place at the heart of the new structure. Mark Hopwood, David Horne, Andy Mellors, Richard Allan, Steve White, Shiona Rolfe, Ian McConnell and so on, all should be given the keys to run the railway. So too, we need fresh blood – those on the ascendancy, outspoken mavericks, and, importantly, a more diverse senior leadership.
With Robin Gisby’s departure later this year as DfTO supremo, there is an opportunity for a new overall leader to come in, freshen things up and make their mark. Someone with experience in managing businesses in a more market-led, commercial environment than the current set-up of recent times and capable of getting all stakeholders behind them.
One last thought. If you believe the polls, the current government has never been more disliked – certainly not in my lifetime. If GBR takes until 2028 to be properly in situ, what happens if a few months later an election leads to a new party in power? The next few years could be a rollercoaster
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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