Rolling stock rip-off ‘may be worth £100m’

The taxpayer may be being ripped off by around £100 million a year by train companies overpaying for their engines and carriages.

But the strange market in rolling stock — where trains tend to be peculiar to the tracks they run on, in a market distorted by state handouts — means we may never know.

Those are the conclusions of the Competition Commission after a three-year investigation into claims by the Department for Transport that the financial institutions which own the three rolling-stock leasing companies — Angel, Porterbrook and HSBC Rail — have overcharged the state-subsidised train companies.

The commission says rail franchises may need to be longer — up to 15 years — so train operators can switch suppliers. Or that the DfT's franchise terms should demand competitive tendering between the leasing companies.

The unusual nature of the market "makes it unlikely competition can ever be fully effective," concludes inquiry chairman Diana Guy. "We have been unable to find a robust way to evaluate the returns [of the leasing companies]."