Greater Anglia rail franchise enters public ownership with passengers hoping for cheaper fares

Lower fares and dependable services continue to be top of the agenda for passengers as Greater Anglia becomes the latest train operator to enter public ownership.

Services transferred to Great British Railways at 2am on Sunday morning, with the first service since privatisation due to be the 4.10am Stansted Express service from London Liverpool Street.

Though Greater Anglia has been ranked among the best operators in the country, passengers at Norwich train station were still hopeful of improvements from the new owners when quizzed by ITV News Anglia.

Value-for-money fares were repeatedly mentioned as priorities by travellers, along with reliability and punctuality.

• Passengers name their priorities as Greater Anglia prepares for nationalisation

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander visited Norwich train station on Thursday ahead of Greater Anglia's move into public ownershi, but immediately played down hopes that a re-nationalised rail service would mean lower ticket prices.

Asked if fares would go up, she said: “I haven’t made a decision about fares for next year.

“I am very conscious that the travelling public want an affordable railway and an affordable public transport system more generally.

“At the moment we spend over £10bn per year of taxpayers’ money on investing and maintaining the infrastructure, the tracks, the signalling on the railways.

“There’s a gap of about £2bn as well each year between the money that comes in through fare revenue and the day-to-day running costs of the trains.

“I need to get the balance right between the contribution that farepayers are making and what [contribution] the taxpayer is making.

“So I can’t promise that fares are going to come down but I’m acutely aware that people want to get value for money.”

Describing Greater Anglia as “one of the best-performing train operating companies in the country”, she said the new operator wanted to "learn from what Greater Anglia are doing and make sure that’s replicated across the rest of the country”.

She added she was “absolutely determined that when we bring the train operating companies into public ownership that the first thing we’ve got to do is make sure we’ve got more reliability on the railways”.

Greater Anglia, operated by the Transport UK Group, ran trains in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.

Greater Anglia is the seventh of 14 train operating companies that will form passenger services under Great British Railways – an upcoming public sector body that will oversee Britain’s rail infrastructure and train operation.

South Western Railway became the first operator brought into public ownership by the Labour Government in May. This was followed by C2C, which runs services between London Fenchurch Street and south Essex, in July.

They joined Northern, TransPennine Express, Southeastern and LNER, which were nationalised under the Conservative government because of performance failings by the former owners of those franchises.

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