Andy Burnham’s northern rail plans looked compelling from the outside. From inside No 10, they look considerably more expensive, more complicated, and more politically treacherous. The prime minister spent years cataloguing every broken promise and delayed service from the opposition benches and the mayoralty. He now owns the whole system.
The question is not whether Burnham wants better railways for the north. He plainly does, and the record is clear enough. The question is whether the position he now occupies makes delivery easier, or simply makes him the next person to disappoint.
The Avanti Problem Is More Complicated Than It Looks
Burnham’s journey to Westminster as the newly elected MP for Makerfield (on an Avanti West Coast service that arrived late) became an irresistible symbol. His view of the operator has never been subtle: ‘Avanti should have been left on probation. People in Greater Manchester deserve a stable, predictable rail service between here and London and it is simply not acceptable. It is one kick in the teeth after another.’
He opposed the renewal of Avanti’s contract. He will, eventually, see it nationalised. But the timeline the snippet suggested, renationalisation in spring 2027, turns out to be wrong. According to the House of Commons Library, Avanti’s current contract runs until 17 October 2032, and Rail Minister Lord Hendy said in December 2024 that Avanti and CrossCountry, described as ‘generally accepted to be the two worst performers in private ownership’, are last in the nationalisation sequence, not first.
Under GOV.UK’s Great British Railways guidance, all passenger services operating under Department for Transport contracts are expected to transfer to public ownership by the end of 2027. Railway-News reports that Great Western Railway transfers on 13 December 2026, the 11th operator to move under public control, leaving only Avanti, CrossCountry, and East Midlands Railway in private hands. If Avanti is last in that sequence, it may clear 2027 only narrowly, or not at all.
A government source told the Guardian: ‘We recognise Avanti isn’t performing and all options are on the table to improve that.’ That is less than a commitment to act quickly. Local government professor Tony Travers puts the dilemma precisely: ‘The service delivery is clearly way below acceptable. Having some of the most senior people in government trying to use it will test whether it can be made better. Either it can and it makes people think it should have been done before, or it can’t, and it’s an insoluble policy question.’
What the Burnham Northern Rail Plans Actually Require
On Northern Powerhouse Rail, the January 2026 government announcement committed £1.1 billion over the Spending Review period for planning, development, and design work, against a total funding cap of £45 billion in 2025 prices, according to the GOV.UK Northern Powerhouse Rail announcement. The programme is structured in phases running from the mid-2030s to the mid-2040s.
The Public Accounts Committee is blunt about what that cap actually means: it is a ceiling on central government funding, not a cost estimate. The committee pointed to the HS2 Phase 1 budget of £45 billion, which by February 2025 was reported as no longer viable, with estimates reaching £66 billion in 2019 prices. Burnham is building his programme’s credibility on a number that may carry the wrong kind of precedent.
The underground station at Manchester Piccadilly is where the arithmetic becomes most uncomfortable. Burnham has been unequivocal: ‘We will never accept anything other than an underground station at Piccadilly. For us, that land is the prime economic development opportunity of the north of England.’ The original snippet cited an extra £5 billion for such a station. That figure, it turns out, understates the problem considerably. HS2’s own assessments, reported by New Civil Engineer, put three underground station options at between £11.4 billion and £12.3 billion each. Burnham’s Crossrail-style financing model, leveraging supplementary business rates, has theoretical merit. Travers is sceptical: ‘It would have to be a substantial payment from business rates in Greater Manchester. I am not sure it would go down well.’
On the Birmingham to Manchester fast line, transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she was ‘fully expecting the new prime minister to tell me to put some rocket boosters under that study’. Burnham will oblige. But wanting faster trains and actually funding them, on a programme whose cost cap has already been flagged as potentially insufficient, are different things entirely.
The devolution agenda complicates all of this further. Burnham spent years arguing that mayors should control local rail. Great British Railways is designed as a guiding mind that balances freight, open access, long-distance, and commuter services. More mayoral influence means more negotiation with that guiding mind, not less. The power outage at a Manchester regional control centre last week, whose disruption rippled across the network, was a reminder of how deeply interconnected the system remains.
Burnham knows where every body is buried on northern rail. The risk now is that it turns out some of those graves were dug by the cost of the ambitions he championed. The underground station figure alone could consume a quarter of the entire NPR budget cap. He has about a decade to prove the sums work before the mid-2030s deadlines arrive.
