Mayors across the North of England could try to seize control of struggling rail services that have “failed” passengers.
North East mayor Kim McGuinness says she and other regional figureheads will explore taking over Northern Trains, under Government plans to give local leaders more powers. The English Devolution White Paper unveiled by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in December outlines how regional mayors will have a “clear right” to request more control over trains, stations, and infrastructure “up to full devolution of defined local services”.
Ms McGuinness told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that she believed such a system could allow her and counterparts around the North of England, including the likes of Greater Manchester’s Andy Burnham, to collectively take over the heavily-criticised Northern franchise.
Northern runs around 2,500 local and regional services every day to towns and cities across the North, including the recently-opened Northumberland Line between Newcastle and Ashington, and is owned by the Department for Transport’s Operator of Last Resort after being nationalised in 2020. Its services have been plagued by cancellations and Northern was issued with a formal breach notice last summer because of its “unacceptable” performance levels, while bosses admitted in October that they were still using fax machines to communicate with staff.
Northern’s problems have been blamed on factors including high levels of sickness and a backlog of training, as well as a lack of train crew availability on Sundays as the day falls outside of some staff’s contracted working week. Suggestions that a group of mayors could come together to operate Northern services that travel across their patches have come after they announced plans in 2024 to unite under the ‘Great North’ brand to collectively lobby for greater powers and investment.
Asked if she would want to see mayors take control over Northern, Ms McGuinness told the LDRS: “Absolutely. Unapologetically, we are dead ambitious for this region and control over train stations is something I was open about wanting to have in this region. Similarly, we will absolutely be looking at regional proposals for control of local rail because too many people are failed by poor service levels.
“I always say that transport is not just about getting from A to B, it is about the infrastructure of opportunity and that is true right across the network. So we will be looking at opportunities to do that.”
North East Mayor Kim McGuinness speaks at the North East Growth Summit in Sunderland.
(Image: Iain Buist/Newcastle Chronicle)
The Labour mayor, whose North East Combined Authority is already responsible for the Tyne and Wear Metro and is also planning to bring the North East’s bus network back under public control, added: “My reading of it [the white paper] is that, yes, we could do that [take over Northern Trains]. One of the big things we did in 2024 was to say that as a Northern group of mayors we want to be working more together more in the interests of the Great North.
“I absolutely want us to be having those conversations about how we get more local decision-making to improve services and get out of the cycle where it is basically us just shouting at operators. Clearly it is not as effective as we can be if we have the actual power to make a change.”
Last October, Northern was ordered to develop an improvement plan at an emergency Rail North Committee meeting. The operator has since said that it wants to have 90% of trains run on time and only 2% of services cancelled by 2027.
A spokesperson for Northern said: “We are committed to working with directly-elected mayors across our network to find the optimal solution for passengers as part of an integrated network.”
The devolution white paper published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says that mayors will be given a statutory role in governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network. It adds that mayors of “established” authorities will “have a clear right” to request greater powers over railways “up to full devolution of defined local services”.
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