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). In 2024, government decided to bring all operators into public ownership under the Public Ownership Programme (POP), using the OLR mechanism.

Our experts led and coordinated the OLR and POP programmes on behalf of the Department for Transport, specifically advising in the following areas People, Operations, Contracts and Commercial functions. We were involved in setting up the public entity under which services operate.

• Assessing and preparing all 14 TOCs in England for the event of public ownership 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 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 Operator – 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 and all contracts under the Transfer Scheme.

• We provided leadership and a collaborative approach to the delivery team which consisted of multiple organisations, including consultancies and the Department for Transport.
• Our due diligence gave comfort to Ministers to make informed, and timely decisions on each TOC in a programmatic approach.
• Successful programme leadership and coordination enabling consistent, high-quality outputs to be delivered in a matrix working model.
• We led the first-of-its-kind mobilisation of Virgin Trains East Coast to LNER setting precedent for future mobilisations of TOCs into public ownership.
• For the Northern mobilisation, our all-encompassing approach for a large, complex business resulted in a smooth transition.
• We have become the government’s trusted go-to advisors for due diligence and mobilisation, having held the role for a decade.