The Prime Minister has spoken in favour of open access operators, telling Shrewsbury MP Julia Buckley that he would be happy for MPs who support the proposed Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway service to meet rail minister Lord Hendy.

Sir Keir Starmer said: ’Our plan for change will see the railways reformed to deliver more reliable and better value services for passengers right across the country. My hon. Friend has been a champion for better railways and easier journeys for her constituents. Open access operators have huge potential to offer passengers more choice. I will be delighted to ensure that she and other interested MPs meet the Rail Minister to put their case forward.’

WSMR, which is backed by Alstom and SLC Rail, made a formal application to the ORR in March last year. It was the only one of a number of current applications to receive even qualified support from the Department for Transport in a recent letter, which said the Department was ‘supportive in principle of WSMR’s proposals to operate new Open Access services between Wrexham General and London Euston, subject to further assessment by Network Rail of performance impacts.’

Other applicants, who include Arriva, FirstGroup and Virgin, all failed to win the DfT’s backing. 

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander had already expressed doubts about open access operators, who will be set to compete with Great British Railways from 2026 or 2027.

Before last July’s election Labour had said that ‘wherever there is a case that open access adds value and capacity to the network, they will be able to continue to compete’.

But in a letter to the ORR in January, Ms Alexander said: ‘‘I am … aware of the additional pressures new services can create on already constrained network capacity and their impact on the value secured from public investment in infrastructure. While Open Access operators pay variable access charges to Network Rail to cover the direct costs incurred running their trains on the network, unlike government contracted operators they do not fully cover the costs of fixed track access charges.’

Major transport groups have been trying to secure open access licences as their operating contracts, which used to be franchises, expire.

The first train operator to be renationalised since the election will be South Western Railway, which will be taken over by DfT Operator Ltd at 02.00 on Sunday.

The next two operators to be renationalised will be c2c in July and Greater Anglia in October.

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