What happened
On 2023-05-11 the Department for Transport announced that TransPennine Express, the FirstGroup-run operator covering Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and routes to Edinburgh and Glasgow, would not have its contract renewed on 28 May. The service, which FirstGroup had run in various guises since 2004, passed to the Operator of Last Resort — state-backed management — after months of disruption that had run since early 2022.
The trigger was reliability: in January and February 2023 about a quarter of TransPennine services were cancelled, the highest rate in the UK, improving only to around one in six in March — still the worst of any operator. The company stood out for cancelling trains the night before they were due to run, which it blamed on staff shortages, high sickness rates, a backlog of driver training and the lack of an overtime working agreement with the drivers' union Aslef. Aslef called the company's own framing 'misleading' and said the blame lay with its 'inept management'.
FirstGroup said it was disappointed and pointed to recruiting and training more drivers than ever before; chief executive Graham Sutherland defended the team's work. Transport Secretary Mark Harper called nationalisation 'not a silver bullet', while Rail magazine's Nigel Harris dismissed the move as 'political window dressing', noting the government had effectively controlled rail finances since pandemic emergency contracts collapsed the franchise system. With the takeover, more than one in five train journeys in Britain were set to run under nationalised operators.
What it cost
The contract, held since 2004 in various forms, was not renewed on 28 May 2023; the service passed to the Operator of Last Resort
Why it happened
Cancellations ran at the worst rate in Britain for months, concentrated on trains pulled the night before service
The operating model leaned on overtime working that the drivers' union refused to provide, with no fallback roster
Driver-training backlogs and sickness went unresolved long enough for the DfT to lose confidence in a renewal
The lesson
A recovery plan that depends on overtime the drivers' union can refuse is not a recovery plan — it is a resignation letter on a timetable
Aftermath
From 28 May 2023 the Operator of Last Resort ran TransPennine, with passengers told to expect no immediate change to services. FirstGroup exited a franchise it had held since 2004, and Labour's shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh reiterated plans to nationalise railways as contracts expire.
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