Train owner companies pay out record £390m in dividends last year

Metropolitan Police / 1 October 2026 CPS asked to consider manslaughter charges over Grenfell Tower fire 1 October 2026 Poverty / 1 October 2026 Campaigners demand action after figures show almost 1,000 homeless people died last year 1 October 2026 Democracy / 1 October 2026 Climate activists stage protest outside London base of crypto billionaire after £36m donation to Reform UK 1 October 2026 Workers' Rights / 1 October 2026 Scotland's striking lecturers march on Holyrood 1 October 2026 Cost-of-Living Crisis / 1 October 2026 Fuel poverty campaigners rally in Glasgow 1 October 2026 Workers' Rights / 1 October 2026 Most workers believe flexible working is important in a job, finds Acas 1 October 2026 THREE companies that own 70 per cent of Britain’s trains paid out a record £390 million in dividends to their shareholders last year, RMT said today.

The rail union called for a levy on rolling stock companies after executives of Angel, Eversholt and Porterbrook pocketed £3.4 million between them in 2025.

Train operators currently lease trains from private rolling stock companies at the cost of several billion pounds a year.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander at the Labour conference on Tuesday said that the government would explore bringing trains into public ownership.

RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said that due to the cost-of-living crisis “we are calling on the government to use this month’s Nudget to introduce a ‘cost-of-travel’ levy on profits to fund a 3.4 per cent fare cut, rather than watching the cash being salted away to offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.”

TUC Congress 2026 / 15 September 2026 We need a rolling-stock revolution to get Britain back on track 15 September 2026 Privatisation and the break-up of our integrated rail system have been disasters. The Labour government’s pledges on reindustrialisation and renationalisation offer the solution, argues DAVE CALFE of Aslef