The Department for Transport appears to have hardened its stance over more open access, partly on the grounds that these services could siphon off unacceptable amounts of revenue from operators controlled by Great British Railways.

A letter to the Office of Rail and Road from the DfT’s director-general for rail reform and strategy Richard Goodman, dated 20 June, also highlights the possibility of a conflict of interest between the National Rail Contracts still possessed by transport groups and their open access operations. He says such a possibility is ‘a risk which only increases as contracts approach their end and attentions shift towards new Open Access applications’.

At the moment, FirstGroup still runs the contract for Great Western Railway and has the majority share in Avanti West Coast, but also operates open access services branded Lumo between London and Edinburgh, while Arriva owns Grand Central but still has the contracts to operate CrossCountry and Chiltern Railways.

First has acquired two more open access contracts which will provide trains between London and South Wales, and London and Stirling, both of which will share at least part of their routes with GWR and AWC.

However, First also has ambitions to run more open access services, including extending Lumo to Glasgow and also running new routes from London to Rochdale, Paignton and Hereford.

Arriva, meanwhile, is promoting a new route between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Brighton, while Alstom wants to revive direct services between London and Wrexham and Virgin wants to return to the West Coast Main Line by providing up to 35 departures a day from London Euston.

Mr Goodman says: ‘DfT analysis suggests that the sum of annual abstraction of each of the currently live Open Access application would be up to £229 million (2024/25 prices), not accounting for the revenue impacts resulting from those services interacting.’

The Hereford proposal has also caused concern at Network Rail, which is worried about the presence of level crossings on the route and limited capacity nearer London.

It is not the first time that the DfT has turned a cold shoulder on more open access. 

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander warned on 6 January this year that ‘We need to be mindful of the impacts of Open Access such as the level of revenue they can abstract from contracted services and the associated implications for passengers and taxpayers.’

Almost a month later her department declined to support any new applications, apart from London to Wrexham, in a letter to the ORR dated 4 February. This said: ‘The Department welcomes the benefits that Open Access services can provide, including improved connectivity and choice for passengers, but, as the Secretary of State set out in her letter of 6 January 2025, we are clear that these benefits must outweigh costs to taxpayers and operational impacts.’

The managing director of FirstGroup’s rail division Steve Montgomery has expressed concern about the DfT’s approach, according to the Financial Times, which said that ‘the ORR was about to make final decisions on the applications for open-access operator licences before it’.

Mr Goodman said in his letter that the Office of Rail and Road is likely to make decisions about at least some of the current applications at board meetings in the near future.

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