Top table dinner: Delivering Positive Change in Rail: Shaping the future together – top ten takeaways

The latest in the series of top table dinners jointly hosted by Stephenson Harwood LLP and AtkinsRéalis was held on Thursday 26 February 2026. The theme for the evening was how the industry can shape the future railway to deliver the benefits of rail reform.

We were delighted to be joined by Laura Shoaf CBE, Chair of Shadow Great British Railways (GBR), who is leading the work already being undertaken on setting up GBR in advance of the Railways Bill completing its journey through Parliament. The formation of GBR is moving at pace and is expected to be stood up in the third quarter of 2027. While establishing the statutory footing will take time, the change for the rail industry is already happening. You can find our thoughts on the Railways Bill here and on the recent Transport Select Committee reports here.

Attendees were challenged to come up with specific feedback to GBR. A few themes emerged in that feedback, including predictability, clarity and defining what success looks like. Our top ten takeaways from the evening are set out below, which we hope do contain some specific areas for GBR to focus on.

To those who joined us, thank you for doing so and we hope you enjoyed the evening. To those who weren't able to join, we hope you find the takeaways helpful and hope you'll be able to join us at a future dinner.

The transformational power of rail: Rail has the power to transform communities and lives for the better. In implementing rail reform, we must not forget the passenger and freight customer. Customers of the railway are unlikely to know – or care about – the details of GBR and renationalisation. What they care about is the service they receive each day, not who is operating it. In implementing rail reform, the industry mustn’t lose sight of delivering a better day-to-day service for its customers. Passenger satisfaction needs to be increased at the same time as reducing overall subsidy – “overall subsidy” taking into account revenue generated. Sometimes, the industry will need to spend some money, such as on marketing, to drive revenue and reduce the overall subsidy. There was a lot of sympathy in the room for the challenges that GBR will face. It was thought that it would benefit GBR to be open and honest about those challenges up front, including acknowledging what it needs to do and being realistic about what it can achieve.
Transparency – and a need to “get on with it”: There was consensus within the room that the supply chain does not really know about what is happening with rail reform and isn’t being given the chance to shape the discussion. More transparency is needed for the industry to get behind and support reform as ultimately it wants GBR to be successful, with a railway to be proud of (see more below). The industry wants to see more detail on how GBR will be organised and how its business units will be structured. The critical question remains to be answered on whether it will be a single employer operational entity or whether it will adopt a holding company structure that puts operations and employees into regional companies. This is important because it will shape GBR’s culture and engagement with the supply chain and wider rail industry. Attendees thought the creation of GBR was a good opportunity to simplify relationships between the centre and regions. Reform should also simplify decision-making processes through the creation of a single, responsible and accountable, team responsible for an integrated railway. Ensuring GBR has a shorter and simpler decision-making structure to deliver decisions more quickly was seen to be a big potential benefit. The integrated railway should make decisions simpler and quicker to deliver, allowing a more dynamic response for the benefit of the customer. Overall, there was a call to “get on with it”, noting that reform is not going to be one thing that happens. Decisions need to be taken and then flexed as the new industry evolves. Parallels were drawn with a “one liner” passenger services nationalisation Bill that started the process and is moving along.
Culture – the direction comes from the top: A clear set of guiding cultural principles underpinning all of GBR’s central and regional functions was considered to be a good way of homogenising culture, whilst allowing regional operations to thrive. Achieving this was recognised as challenging, with 150,000 people coming together from different organisations. The Virgin brand was given as an example of what we should be looking to achieve. There is a consistent ethos throughout different Virgin businesses, but each business has authority to deliver the day-to-day. A plea was made not to lose the best bits of the train operator DNA. This includes innovation and challenging other parts of the industry to perform consistently well, as a check and balance on infrastructure performance, and commerciality. There was widespread support within the room for GBR not being a “Network Rail Mark 2.0” organisation, but anxiety that this could be the direction of travel. The view was that this must be avoided at all costs. To this end, there was some disappointment expressed with the current hierarchy of GBR, which contains a lot of familiar faces who, while bringing considerable experience to their roles, also risk reproducing current thinking and ways of working (described by one table as “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”). Bringing in senior executives from industries other than rail, and from different ethnic, racial and gender backgrounds would help to shake up the culture while also offering better diversity. There was also a call to sort out the top level team in GBR before filling in roles further down the chain. This will help to define the culture and vision from the very beginning.
Making the workforce proud to work in rail: Guests in the room aside, there was a general feeling that rail was not yet a proud industry. Rail reform and the integration of track and train offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change that. Rail reform has been on the cards for well over five years and there is already evidence of people leaving rail for opportunities in other industries and indeed, the supply chain pursuing rail and other transport opportunities overseas. Understanding GBR’s vision will be fundamental to employee relations going forward, particularly if GBR wants to attract younger generations into working within the industry. There needs to be a sense of mission to draw people in, and consideration needs to be given to the remuneration and benefits package to attract and retain the right people. The future railway needs to properly represent the diverse communities it serves. There was also recognition that it will take time to change, and will come with a cost, and in the move to reducing subsidy, we must not focus on short term cost savings and lose the public good that the railway delivers. It was recognised that everyone has a role to play as an ally to make the railway a better place to work in the future, which would be helped by there being a clear talent strategy.
Funding of the railway – empowering the railway: Clarifying the roles of GBR and HM Treasury will be critical to the success of reform. Put simply, many guests felt HM Treasury should stay out of micromanaging the industry. There was a general feeling that work needs to be done to get HM Treasury to understand GBR as an engine for growth rather than a cost centre. The industry has to do its bit to better articulate the value of rail. Having GBR engage with the private sector on investment opportunities would also assist, as would collaboration with local authorities, including the Mayoral Authorities. It was acknowledged that this would be a difficult exercise given how HM Treasury calculates returns on investment, but there were real opportunities if GBR could get it right. Those in the room felt that in seeking to reduce net subsidy, managed decline of the railway should be avoided at all costs. Investment and renewal of the infrastructure was needed to deliver a reliable railway capable of growing revenue. The current annual business planning and funding process was generally accepted to be broken as it leads to short term planning and needs addressing to empower integrated businesses going forward. At the same time, the room was acutely aware that rail needs to compete with all other parts of the public sector, such as health and defence, for funding, and therefore it needs to come together to make the case for rail investment. This might need to be done differently in future.
Delivering the railway – an overarching vision: GBR needs to avoid boom and bust investment and smooth out demand in order to provide certainty to the supply chain. It was acknowledged that if GBR is successful, the supply chain will also be successful, and that GBR will still need a vibrant supply chain to deliver its aims. To this end, GBR should have a clear strategy and vision in place to provide certainty on the direction of travel. Suppliers will also need to understand how procurements will operate with a preference being expressed for GBR keeping procurements consistent and simple so that potential suppliers know how to respond in a way that best helps GBR to achieve its preferred outcomes and deliver optimum value for money. A cross-industry working group on procurement synergies was considered to be desirable. Public sector ownership offers the opportunity to drive through public policy more directly across all of GBR’s operations, and that should include giving visibility to the supply chain, social value, and including small and medium enterprises.
Public perception – engaging meaningfully with communities and passengers: Public sentiment will drive the success of GBR. The Secretary of State has stated that a measure of success will be if the industry is “boringly reliable”. But this is not ambitious enough. The industry can also drive social mobility, and help to engage with the causes of antisocial behaviour. It can offer employment. It can help with levelling up. It can use railway facilities for the benefit of the communities it serves. It is a key part of the decarbonisation agenda. Whilst recognising that operating a reliable railway service is essential, embedding the railway within communities will help positive perceptions of what the railway is going, and the public good. It does not take revolutionary ideas to help improve public perception. Small things such as ensuring visibility of staff, a clean environment, and a commitment to keeping passengers informed with “what to do” when things go wrong are easy wins which can be implemented now. Empowering people on the ground to do the right thing to deliver for the customer, with a consistency of message, has to be a key focus for the industry going forward. Equally, there needs to be honesty about the limits of what will be on offer.
Driving growth: Attendees emphasised the role that GBR had to play in growth, both passenger growth and wider economic growth, and that this needed to be considered in tandem with the need for it to be sustainable financially. This may involve greater cross-departmental collaboration within government so that wider benefits can be properly taken into account. There should be targets for GBR for both freight and passenger growth, together with strong environmental targets for clean air and carbon reduction. However, these targets needed to be supported with some mechanism under which there would be a cost associated with failure to meet them and which would, in turn, determine the value of what success looks like.
Engage, engage, engage: The room heard that GBR is listening to its views. However, there was real concern that GBR should do more to actively engage with the industry. Attendees asked for more consistent engagement by GBR with industry groups so that they can help deliver positive change and help GBR achieve its goals. Engagement shouldn’t just be at the top – it needs to start from the bottom and work its way up as well. Frontline employees and the supply chain all need to be consulted – and to feel their voices have been heard – to ensure GBR is set up for success. In doing so, GBR will also gain valuable insights which it can use to deliver its goals.
Keeping reform on track: Whilst rail is highly political, guests thought GBR should remain politically agnostic and should be primarily focused on what customers want. Predictability is also needed to facilitate private investment. Delivering the railway for the benefit of its customers should not shift with political cycles. There was agreement that there should be a strong passenger voice guiding GBR. That voice must include those potential passengers who have easy access to alternative transport modes such as road and air and may not currently choose rail. GBR’s main competition will come from those alternative modes, and GBR will need to consider how to get people to use the railway. Hearing from those who do not currently choose rail will be key to growing patronage. At the same time, attendees were keen to see an independent body able to ensure that GBR operates within a level playing field.

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