Hundreds of civil servants are to move over from the Department for Transport to the new state-owned rail operator.
A formal consultation process has begun which could see around 200-300 DfT transfer over to DfT Operator Ltd, the government’s public sector rail owning group.
DfTO's purpose is to deliver Labour's manifesto commitment to bring privately-owned train operators into public ownership in advance of the creation of Great British Railways in 2027.
In a comment provided to the Guardian – which reported that the transfers could come alongside job losses to cut costs and reduce duplication – a DfT spokesperson said: “There will be no redundancies as a result of these moves into DfTO.
"The 200-300 DfT staff involved will transfer to DfTO, bringing their work, skills and expertise closer to the frontline of a publicly owned railway. This will bring us a step closer to ending the fragmented railway we see today, towards a railway run as a business by industry professionals.”
According to the Guardian two rail directors general, Richard Goodman and Alex Hynes, have written to staff telling them that the DfT is “entering an exciting and critical phase of rail reform” and that they have “updated colleagues involved in the moves about what this approach” would mean for them.
Fourteen train operating companies are being unified under common public ownership under the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill 2024.
Four were already under public ownership – London North Eastern Railway, Northern, Southeastern, TransPennine Express – while South Western Railway and c2c have recently been taken over. A seventh operator, Greater Anglia, will be nationalised in October.
The confirmation of 200-300 civil servants moving from DfT to its train operator company comes after the department announced that around 300 officials out of the central department’s 3,700-strong workforce would leave under the voluntary exit scheme launched by the department in the autumn.