Urgent Open Letter: Stop new private rail contracts now

15th July 2025 | News

Urgent Open Letter: Stop new private rail contracts now

Today we sent a letter to Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander to demand urgent action to stop the Office of Rail & Road awarding new contracts to private companies.

Allowing ‘open access’ operators to continue will completely undermine our new publicly-owned Great British Railways before it has even begun.

Read the Letter

Ellie Harrison, Founder, Bring Back British Rail, said:

“Labour’s vision for our railways says they want passengers to feel “they are simply using ‘the railway’, not navigating a confusing network of competing organisations and interests“. They say they want to reform “the complex and fragmented fares landscape inherited from privatisation”. None of this will be possible to achieve if they allow privatised ‘open access’ operators to continue alongside Great British Railways.

“That would mean we would still have to put up with the confusion of multiple private companies selling their own tickets on various websites and apps, and all the different coloured trains sitting at station platforms, some that you are ‘allowed’ to use with your ticket, and some that you are not. Not to mention all the tedious announcements about this being a ‘Lumo’ service, and that being a Great British Railways one – it simply goes against everything these once-in-a-generation reforms are meant to achieve.”

Emily Sullivan (née Yates), Co-founder, Association of British Commuters, said:

“It is a scandal that the ORR has continued signing off these applications, using a process that is completely discredited and the government is writing new laws to fix.

“We need an urgent moratorium on open access, and then the full reform of the ORR in the public interest. This means dropping its ‘competition duties’ that only serve the interests of private companies, and instead making decisions based on socioeconomic interest and the value of public money.”

Johnbosco Nwogbo, Lead Campaigner, We Own It, said:

“The public want a fully publicly owned railway with integrated ticketing, better services and lower fares. As it stands, the Government is starting that process but must not allow any privatisation by the back door.

“Private operators are scrambling to cling on to their highly profitable routes via open access contracts. If the government allows this, it will undermine the whole project and push up fares across the board.”