Under Section 30 of the Railways Act, to ensure continuity of services for passengers, the Secretary of State for Transport is obligated to guarantee and provide train services when no private operator is available to perform them. This is referred to as the Operator of Last Resort (OLR). To prepare for the event of OLR, our experts led and coordinated the programme on behalf of the Department for Transport, specifically advising in the following areas People, Operations and Commercial functions. We were involved in setting up the public entity under which services operate under OLR. We have played key roles in each of the four most recent occasions of OLR.

• Assessing and preparing all 14 TOCs in England for the event of OLR through due diligence and identifying the underlying causes of operational sub-performance.
• Identified key obstructions to the transition of the operator from the incumbent owning group to a publicly owned entity.
• Analysed the operational, financial and contractual health of train rail operators.
• Prepared business plans to instigate recovery from the issues facing distressed TOCs and delivered these plans within certain TOCs.
• Managed the mobilisation plans; coordination of all government, incumbent, outgoing operator and advisor activities; implemented governance procedures for risk escalation for the transfers of four TOCs.
• Led the mobilisation and development of the DfT’s owning group - DfT OLR Holdings Limited (DOHL) ahead of the first transfer of services of this kind.
• Offered technical advice to specific areas of the mobilisation programme including transferring employees under the requirements of TUPE.