Another open access application has reached the end of the line, with the news that Grand Central has abandoned its proposal to run services from Cleethorpes, saying that the plan is ‘no longer commercially viable’.
Grand Central’s application was launched on 21 March last year, and this set out a route between Cleethorpes, Grimsby, Habrough, Scunthorpe and London King’s Cross. However, GC also said ‘The plan makes best use of capacity on the rail network by running trains from the proposed new stops before connecting into existing Grand Central services at Doncaster.’
In other words, trains from Cleethorpes would have been coupled to trains from Bradford Interchange, and worked between Doncaster and London as one unit.
Such a method of working always runs risks, because one portion might be delayed on its way to Doncaster and hold up the other portion, although it is true that trains divided or joined en route are still common on parts of the network, particularly on routes which used to be run by the Southern Railway.
In theory, open access provides passenger services on routes which are not served by the operators with government contracts. There are, for example, no direct services from Cleethorpes and other parts of north Lincolnshire to London.
There would probably be very few through trains between London and Bradford, or London and Hull, if open access operators did not exist.
Until the change of government in 2024, open access operators had appeared to be flourishing. Several new routes were approved, such as London-Swansea-Carmarthen and London-Motherwell-Stirling.
The Conservative Rail Plan had envisaged a ‘guiding mind’ to be known as Great British Railways. Train operators would stay in the private sector, having been awarded concessions (low risk, rather than high risk franchises). Labour also proposed setting up GBR, but it would now be the industry’s ‘directing mind’ and the operators would be renationalised. This, of course, is what has happened after Labour won the 2024 election.
This development has sidelined the private sector, which now sees open access as the best (indeed, the only) way of staying on the rails as far as passengers are concerned.
In February last year (and therefore after Labour had come to power), the House of Commons Library published an update called ‘Open access operators for rail services’. This document listed a number of potential open access services, as they had existed in July 2024.
They included Cardiff-Edinburgh (Alliance Rail), Taunton-Swindon/Weston super Mare (GO-OP), Edinburgh-Glasgow (Lumo), London-Rochdale (Lumo), London-Wrexham General (Shropshire Midlands Railway) and 35 services a day from London Euston to Birmingham New Street, Manchester (Piccadilly and Victoria), Liverpool Lime Street, Rochdale, Preston and Glasgow Central (Virgin Group).
None of these applications have become a reality, with the exception of Lumo’s extension of some London-Edinburgh services to Glasgow, which started running in December last year.
Applications since July 2024 have also failed or have been withdrawn, such as the Cleethorpes service.
In theory, open access is still welcome. The government has said ‘there will be a continued role for open access operators where they can add value and capacity to the network’.
But in April this year, after it had become apparent that Network Rail was not supporting Grand Central’s application for Cleethorpes, Grand Central protested about the alleged ‘inconsistent and pattern of bias in Network Rail’s approach to reviewing open access applications and the consistency of these negative responses, which are to the detriment of competition on the network and against the statutory obligations of Network Rail’s licence conditions, namely, to remain unbiased and independent in assessing network capacity’.
Network Rail is a public organisation, of course, and although it is not a departmental body it can be expected to echo government policy.
What, in truth, is that policy? If Grand Central is right about the ‘consistency of negative responses’, are those responses really in line with the unspoken view which is being taken in the corridors of power?
Insiders claim that open access is no longer welcome at the railway table. The revenue it earns is abstracted, to some extent at least, from the earnings of the ‘official’ operators, and so any loss is borne by the taxpayer.
On the other hand, many passengers like their journeys by open access services.
The Office of Rail and Road reports that open access operators account for around 0.5 per cent of passenger journeys on the rail network. On average, they performed slightly better than comparable long-distance contracted operators on measures of punctuality and reliability during 2025-26, with significantly lower cancellation rates.
Passenger satisfaction was generally higher among open access operators, with all domestic open access operators recording satisfaction scores around or above the industry median. At the same time, complaints per journey remained higher for open access operators than for comparable contracted operators and increased more quickly during the latest year. As in previous years, punctuality and reliability remained amongst the most important sources of complaints.
The typical open access operator is handicapped by having a very small fleet. If a train fails, its passengers often have to be diverted to other National Rail services.
In other words, the open access operators cannot really manage without the support of the contracted or state-owned operators, while if there was no open access the government operators seem unlikely to miss it.
Network Rail is also hampered by a lack of capacity, particularly on busy routes like the West Coast Main Line. It was this shortage of spare paths which probably blocked applications like Virgin’s, although this was particularly ambitious, considering that it required up to 35 paths a day from London Euston. So is Network Rail ‘consistently negative’ about more open access because it is following government policy, or because it simply cannot afford the space?
In more recent times, the attention of potential open access operators has been turning to international services, and Virgin is a leading contender which has won access to Temple Mills depot in east London, where again capacity is in short supply. The ORR has also ‘pre-approved’ a new framework track access agreement between HS1 Limited and Virgin Trains, which will allow Virgin Trains to operate up to 20 daily return services between London and Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam from 1 October 2030 to 31 December 2040.
The next year will be interesting. Will any more domestic open access applications succeed, or as the pressure on paths in Britain continues, perhaps the future of open access really lies abroad.
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