FIRST GROUP PROFITEERING

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: july/aug 2025 :: RMTnews 5 RMT has condemned First Group’s huge profits and its ongoing exploitation of Britain’s fragmented railway system through open access operations.   The company announced a surge in operating profits of £222 million, a boosted final dividend, and a fresh £50 million share buyback. First Group’s open access arm, which operates Hull Trains and Lumo, generated £106 million in revenue and £34 million in operating profit - a margin of 32 per cent. In 2023 it reported an operating profit margin of 28 per cent from its two open access operations, as it continues to siphon money out of the railway network without contributing fairly to its upkeep. RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said that First Group was cashing in off the back of a broken system which allowed the cherry-picking of profitable routes, draining revenue from public services, and dodging proper infrastructure costs. “This is continued privatisation by the back door. It undermines Labour’s commitment to a publicly owned railway and keeps the gravy train running for shareholders. “It is time to close the loopholes, stop the profiteering, and bring all rail services into a single, publicly owned, integrated system that puts passengers and workers before private profit. “We want an immediate moratorium on new open access approvals and a phased integration of existing open access services into the publicly owned Great British Railways (GBR),” he said. RMT is also demanding guarantees that open access staff will be protected and brought into the new national operator on decent terms and conditions. Open access operators run services on publicly owned track but outside any contractual relationship with the government. That means that they can cherry-pick profitable routes whilst not contributing to the long-term maintenance of the network as well as facing virtually no accountability to passengers or taxpayers. While private operators claim that open access is about ‘competition’, the real impact is the opposite: fragmentation and duplication. These services increase congestion, reduce timetabling flexibility for GBR, and make fare integration and passenger experience worse. Moreover, the rail regulator (ORR) — not the elected government — approves these services, with little public scrutiny. That undermines the very vision Heidi Alexander MP set out when she announced the move to public ownership: a simple, accountable, publicly owned railway focused on passengers, not profits. Nevertheless, applications for new open access services have surged. From Virgin’s proposed rival service on the West Coast Main Line to First Group’s expansion of Lumo, these bids aim to carve out private revenue streams just as the government is trying to integrate the system under GBR. Open access operators often claim they operate without subsidy. That’s misleading as they benefit from significantly lower or no fixed track access charges and the ability to skim revenue from publicly run services through fare pooling systems like ORCATs. Ultimately these operators avoid long-term infrastructure costs borne by public operators and it is public infrastructure and passenger fares — not entrepreneurial risk — funding private shareholder profits. FIRST GROUP PROFITEERING Union calls for government to crackdown on open access rail as part of re-uniting the network