Northern Rail to be renationalised from March

Grant Shapps said the operator Arriva, owned by the German state railway Deutsche Bahn, would hand the keys back to the Department for Transport on 1 March.

He said passengers had “lost trust” in the firm’s operations, which cover much of the North of England.

Services will be operated by the so-called ‘operator of last resort’ - essentially a state-owned company controlled by the DfT.

“People across the north deserve better, their communities deserve better and I am determined to achieve that,” Shapps said in his statement.

Northern Rail has struggled to maintain a viable rail service since the introduction of new timetables in May 2018, which at times has seen hundreds of services cancelled each day, as punctuality has languished.

The train drivers’ union, ASLEF, was supportive of the decision, but general secretary Mick Whelan did warn passengers that there would not necessarily be an immediate improvement to the service.

“[This is] because many of the systemic failures at Northern - the late delivery of new rolling stock, the cancellation by the Conservative government of infrastructure upgrades, trying to run a service with too few drivers - cannot be remedied overnight,” Whelan said.

It is the fourth time the operator of last resort has been called in since railway operations were handed over to private companies in the 1990s - and the first time two franchises will be run by the government simultaneously.

The InterCity East Coast franchise is currently operated by the DfT under the LNER brand, after Virgin Trains East Coast, which was majority-owned by FTSE 250 passenger transport operator Stagecoach, abandoned the franchise in 2018 due to financial issues.

Between 2009 and 2015 the same franchise was also operated by the government under the banner East Coast after FTSE 250 company National Express defaulted on its obligations.

From 2003 to 2006 the state ran South Eastern Trains after the French transport conglomerate Connex - now known as Transdev - was stripped of the South Eastern franchise by the now defunct Strategic Rail Authority.