A panel at last month’s Better Transport Conference, organised by Campaign for Better Transport, brought together operators, policy leaders and industry leaders to assess where the UK rail reform currently stands. The conversation that followed was optimistic about Great British Railways, but also included recognition and caution that the structural and cultural work ahead will be demanding

At this year’s Better Transport Conference – part of Better Transport Week – a panel of industry leaders gathered to examine what it will take to deliver on rail reform’s promise. Those in the room heard from Policy Director of the Railway Industry Association, Robert Cook; Founder of Freewheeling, Thomas Ableman; Chair of CILT(UK), Anna-Jane Hunter; Deputy Director of Common Wealth, Sarah Nankivell; and Managing Director of SouthEastern, Steve White – with the session chaired by Chief Executive of Campaign for Better Transport, Ben Plowden.

Drawing from his experience leading the UK’s first integrated public sector track-and-train railway, Steve White described the process as “couch to 5k – first you walk, then you jog, then you run.” Southeastern Railway – formed in June 2025 when Southeastern and Network Rail’s Kent Route merged under a single leadership team – brought drivers and signallers, timetable planning and engineering access into the same departments for the first time in a generation. The result is customer satisfaction at 86% and cancellation rates among the lowest nationally.

What worked for Southeastern, Steve said, was the ability to make joined-up decisions quickly and locally. Aligning track renewals with platform accessibility upgrades, using driver knowledge to target vegetation removal, and sharing customer data across the organisation to build a unified view of performance all helped the railway to function more coherently.

Sarah Nankivell framed rail renationalisation as a chance to redirect financial flows that were previously leaving the system as shareholder dividends back into service and investment. Beyond the economics, she made a case for democratic governance – bringing worker and passenger voices into how the railway is run, not just who owns it. She said this rail reform was being watched as a test for what public ownership could deliver, and its outcome would set a precedent. “The way this transition is managed will shape public attitudes to public services well beyond transport.”

The biggest question in the room was around whether a single, national Great British Railways brand would be able to deliver integration, without triggering centralisation. Thomas Ableman, founder of Freewheeling, suggested that a unified brand carries an

implicit logic. Over time, decision rights drift upward – from the railway into Derby, then into the Treasury, then into the Department for Transport. His concern was that the local empowerment that made Southeastern’s model work would get eroded, and replaced by a structure that looks integrated but behaves like a hierarchy.

The answer, Thomas argued, lies in governance rather than ownership. He pointed to Transport for London as the model: its success built on direct electoral accountability: a mayor answerable to Londoners for how their transport network performs. His preferred direction was something closer to a European approach, where local authorities procure local rail services and long-distance routes run on a more commercial basis. Anna-Jane Hunter, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in the UK, said that devolution can create the conditions for better and more responsive decision making, or it can produce fiefdoms, where local operators go their own way without adequate coordination across boundaries. That risk is particularly acute for around 30% of the network sitting outside the core reform scope: freight, devolved nations, and areas where operational geography does not map neatly onto political boundaries.

Robert Cook brought supply chain into the room and said that two-thirds of GBR’s spend will flow through suppliers – which means the value the reform generates will depend heavily on how that relationship is structured. He cited a 30% cost gap between project-by-project electrification and a properly programmatic, long-term pipeline. That figure is a measure of what the impact could be if procurement becomes fragmented across multiple business units and devolved authorities.

A publicly owned railway is exposed to short-term fiscal pressure in a way that a privatised one, with its contractual structures and franchising arrangements, manages differently. The pressure to do less, or to do it more cheaply in ways that harm passengers and the wider economy, will not go away. Steve’s response to this was practical: a “balanced scorecard” of outcomes – measuring quality, social inclusion and regional equality alongside financial performance – as a structural defence against purely cost-driven decisions. Multi-year budgets and clear public-purpose objectives were proposed alongside it as necessary conditions for the model to hold.

The closing discussion touched on what the railway needs to do beyond simply running better. Steve spoke about the need to give people new reasons to travel – local partnerships, targeted promotions, imaginative marketing to non-users – as part of a broader effort to drive modal shift and decarbonise transport. Thomas noted that printed maps remain one of the most powerful tools for inspiring travel and engaging politicians with the network’s potential, while digital tools are better suited to planning journeys people have already decided to make. Anna-Jane reminded the audience that the cultural preference for cars is deeply embedded in the UK, and until stations are accessible without one, end-to-end journeys will remain harder than they should be.

The panel’s overall message indicated that the UK’s rail reform programme has real momentum and an opportunity to demonstrate what public ownership can achieve. Whether the governance, the culture and the long-term commitment hold when the political and fiscal pressures arrive is the question the industry will need to answer.