Hundreds of civil servants are being transferred from the Department for Transport to the state-owned rail operator as the government looks to cut Whitehall posts and overhaul the railways.
Ministers have been pushing to find savings from across the civil service, but a government spokesperson denied there would be immediate redundancies in what bosses told staff was a “critical phase” of the creation of Great British Railways (GBR).
However, industry sources believe jobs will go, as employees consider their future outside the civil service, and the government attempts to cut costs and reduce duplication in a nationalised railway.
A message to staff from two rail director generals, Richard Goodman and Alex Hynes, said the DfT was “entering an exciting and critical phase of rail reform” and had “updated colleagues involved in the moves about what this approach” would mean for them.
A formal consultation process is beginning that could lead to 300 employees being moved out over the course of this year, with many heading to offices in London Waterloo, as the state holding company DfT Operator Limited (DfTO) takes more train operators under its control.
The Essex commuter service C2C was brought into public hands a week ago. This followed the first planned nationalisation, of South Western services, in May.
Under government plans, the country’s remaining passenger services will be renationalised and the railway will be run by GBR, which will also incorporate the functions of Network Rail to integrate track and trains.
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.”
The DfTO chief executive, Robin Gisby, will not see through the transition to GBR, after it was announced that he would be stepping down in December.
Gisby had run state-owned train operations for seven years, and had said two weeks earlier that he would continue to work through the transition. However, sources indicated that GBR would now probably not be up and running until 2028.
The DfT spokesperson added: “DfTO is about to enter a pivotal phase and will be appointing a successor to lead the publicly owned operators through this change, bringing the network together under one mission.”
The chief executive of Network Rail, Sir Andrew Haines, is also retiring in the autumn. His successor was last week named as Jeremy Westlake, now chief financial officer.
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Haines and Gisby are leaving at a time of the biggest operational upheaval in Britain’s railways for many years, the December 2025 timetable change.
The new timetable is intended to allow for the benefits of billions of pounds spent upgrading the east coast mainline, to include faster trains to Edinburgh and more services to stations along the route.
Previously expected last December, it was postponed amid fears of a repeat of the chaos that followed a switch in May 2018. Sources said the new timetable would still be “challenging” but the industry was under pressure to demonstrate the worth of the investment.
Passengers on the line faced disruptions on Sunday when overrunning engineering works and a power failure in north London meant no trains could run out of Kings Cross until the afternoon.