Updated 12.40

The Office of Rail and Road has approved applications from three existing open access operators to run additional services on the East Coast Main Line and for Grand Central to call at Seaham for the first time, but it has signalled to the Department for Transport that it will not be changing its ‘established approach to assessing the impact on funds available to Secretary of State’.

First’s Lumo services from London to Edinburgh will be extended four times a day from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street, which means that Scotland’s largest city will now be served by an open access operator for the first time, and Hull Trains has been gained the rights to run one daily additional service from London to Hull.

However, the ORR has rejected Hull Trains’ bid to run direct services between London King’s Cross and Sheffield via Retford because of capacity constraints, while the new GC calls at Seaham have been granted on a ‘time-limited and contingent basis’ for 12 months because Nexus already has firm rights to run Tyne & Wear Metro trains from Sunderland to Seaham. The ORR has conceded that the GC’s Seaham conditions do not ‘offer operators or passengers certainty beyond December 2026’.

Apart from four new daily calls at Seaham, Grand Central has also gained two additional daily services from Wakefield Kirkgate to Bradford Interchange, one additional Bradford Interchange to Wakefield Kirkgate service on weekdays and Saturdays and one additional Bradford Interchange to Wakefield Kirkgate service in each direction on Sundays, as well as one additional Peterborough call each way on weekdays and Saturdays, and two additional Peterborough calls each way on Sundays.

The ORR’s director of strategy, policy and reform Stephanie Tobyn said: ‘Approving these additional open access services will increase connectivity on the East Coast Main Line. Importantly, we have ensured the approval of these services can be accommodated alongside the major service uplifts by other operators, which have been planned into the December 2025 timetable, so together passengers and freight customers can benefit from more direct connections and greater choice from December.’

FirstGroup said it was ‘disappointed’ that the ORR has not approved its application for a new Hull Trains service between London and Sheffield and that it ‘will continue to explore further potential opportunities for the route’, which would have provided estimated 350,000 people in the Worksop and Woodhouse areas with direct trains to London, ‘with all of the economic benefit this would have brought’.

First’s chief executive officer Graham Sutherland added: ‘Open access rail operators bring significant private investment to both the rail sector and UK manufacturing, connect under-served communities and deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits.

‘We are pleased to have been awarded the extensions to our successful open access rail operations. This is an important step in our efforts to materially grow our open access business and will allow us to build on the substantial benefits we are making to the communities we serve, and to attract even more passengers to rail.’

Grand Central said: ‘We are pleased the regulator has approved our application to introduce services to Seaham, the town’s first direct connection to London. However, we are disappointed our application to offer additional stopping services between London, York, Bradford, and Peterborough has not been granted.

‘We provided detailed evidence to both Network Rail and the Office for Rail and Road that demonstrates the East Coast Main Line can accommodate these services, which are essential for encouraging passengers to make the shift to public transport and could have enabled up to half a million more journeys each year.

‘We continue to believe all our proposals were both viable and in the public interest, which was reflected in the significant support our application received from local stakeholders, who welcomed our proposals for additional services to under-served communities. We are carefully reviewing all the decisions made regarding access on the East Coast Main Line. While we acknowledge the challenges posed by the timing and complexity of the application process, we are concerned about potential inconsistencies, including that some of Network Rail's performance modelling, which contributed to the decision, created constraints that limited the full consideration of our proposals.

‘Meanwhile we continue to advance other applications, including for London-Cleethorpes.’

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