Kingman named first chair of Great British Railways as Railways Bill sits in Lords

The Department for Transport confirmed Sir John Kingman as the first chair of Great British Railways on 16 October 2026, with the former Treasury official starting in the role immediately while the Railways Bill is still before Parliament.

The department said Kingman will shape the design of the new organisation, continue the integration of track and train operations and drive industry readiness for transition as the Bill completes its passage. Once GBR is formally established, it said, he will lead the third biggest public sector organisation in Britain.

Heidi Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport, said: "Sir John Kingman's appointment marks a defining moment in our mission to put passengers first and rebuild Britain's railways."

Kingman is chair of Barclays UK PLC and formerly chaired Legal and General Group PLC and Tesco Personal Finance, according to the department. He was Second Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury during the financial crisis, including the nationalisation of Northern Rock, and later became the first chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The timetable he inherits

The Railways Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 5 November 2025 and, according to GOV.UK guidance last updated on 20 September 2026, is still being scrutinised in the House of Lords. The department expects GBR to be operational about 12 months after the Bill receives Royal Assent.

The Bill does not set out GBR's corporate structure or design, with the department promising more detail later. Under the legislation, GBR will manage tracks, stations and depots as Network Rail does today, and will be a new publicly owned company headquartered in Derby.

Operator transfers are already under way. South Western Railway's services were the first to move into public ownership, on 25 May 2025, and Chiltern Railways' services transferred on 20 September 2026, the most recent transfer. The department expects all contract-based passenger services to be in public ownership by the end of 2027.

Sir John Kingman, Chair of Great British Railways, said: "I want to help to build a simpler, more unified railway that puts the interests of the passengers and customers first, supports growth and creates opportunity across the country."

The Derby headquarters

The department said the GBR headquarters site at Becketwell in Derby was revealed in the same week as the appointment, with an estimated £151m boost to the regional economy. A separate department release said construction is expected to start in early 2027 and finish by spring 2029.

Derby City Council said a planning application for 3 Springwell Square, the building that will house GBR, was submitted in October 2026. The building will provide about 106,000 sq ft of Grade A office space, and the council said it is working with the East Midlands Combined Authority (EMCCA) on funding for the scheme.

Derby was confirmed as GBR's home in March 2023 from a shortlist of six cities: Birmingham, Crewe, Doncaster, Newcastle, York and Derby.

Industry response

Richard George, who was appointed Network Rail chair in 2026, said there is already a huge amount of work under way to bring track and train closer together. Sir Andrew Haines, chair of DFTO, said Kingman's experience in government and in chairing institutions and businesses would be invaluable as the transformation to establish GBR continues.

The department said publicly owned operators have introduced 76,000 extra seats a week and that fares were frozen this year for the first time in 30 years. The regulated fare freeze in England started in early March 2026 and is expected to save existing passengers £600m in 2026/27, according to the department.

The department also said less than 7% of the railway's workforce is under 25.

Kingman served at the Treasury until July 2016 and took up the permanent UKRI chairmanship in April 2018, having been interim chair since 2016, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He earlier worked as a managing director at Rothschild and as a Lex columnist at the Financial Times.