Another rail strike is set to disrupt train journeys this weekend – with further industrial action planned in August.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) is taking strike action over pay, jobs, pensions and conditions, while the ASLEF union has announced overtime bans in a dispute over pay.
ASLEF represents drivers, whereas RMT represents members from lots of different sectors within the rail industry – including station staff and guards.
When ASLEF members go on strike, it usually means there are no drivers. When RMT members go on strike, there is widespread disruption to the network with lots of people in different roles going on strike.
Here is everything you need to know:
Rail strike dates
The RMT union has scheduled a further walkout on Saturday 29 July.
Many services will not run at all. Those that do are likely to be very busy, and the timetable will start later and finish earlier than on a non-strike day.
Meanwhile, ASLEF members at 16 rail operators will refuse to work overtime – an action short of a strike – on the following days:
Monday 31 July
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Tuesday 1 August
Wednesday 2 August
Thursday 3 August
Friday 4 August
Saturday 5 August
Monday 7 August
Tuesday 8 August
Wednesday 9 August
Thursday 10 August
Friday 11 August
Saturday 12 August
Which train lines are set to be affected?
Avanti West Coast
Avanti West Coast recommend customers check their entire journey before travelling on the RMT strike day, especially the first and last trains.
Late services the night before and early services the next day will also be affected, it said.
It said it plans to run its normal timetable during the ASLEF action.
Customers who booked tickets to travel on strike days before the industrial action was announced can claim a full fee-free refund from their point of purchase.
C2C
On 29 July, all services will run to/from Fenchurch Street station and will not stop at Liverpool Street or Stratford.
It said services will not be affected by the ASLEF strike.
Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways said during the ASLEF action, trains will be busier than usual, and there will be changes across the network’s timetable.
It has also advised customers to “check before you travel”.
A very limited service will be operating on 29 July, with one train an hour running to destinations from Marylebone station.
The journey planner is up to date with services for the strike day, it said.
CrossCountry
The train operating company has said during the ASLEF industrial action, “a small number of services may be subject to late-notice cancellation or amendment during this period”.
On 29 July it will be running a limited service.
East Midlands Railway
On 29 July EMR services will run between 7.30am and 6.30pm only.
Services will start later and finish earlier than usual with the last departures starting between 3pm and 4.30pm.
“Only travel by rail if absolutely necessary and if you do travel, expect severe disruption,” the company warned.
Image: RMT leader Mick Lynch (centre) joins members of his union on a picket line on 2 June
Greater Anglia
Services will start at 7am, with all last trains reaching their destination by 11pm.
Most routes will have a “normal or near normal service” during the hours that trains are running, Greater Anglia said.
However some routes will have a limited service and a small number may have no trains at all.
Short notice cancellations may also occur, the company said.
Greater Anglia has said services will start later the day after strikes as a “knock-on” from the walkouts.
Great Western Railway
GWR has said that during the RMT strike, there will be a reduced and revised timetable, and warned many parts of its network “will have no service at all”.
It also said during the ASLEF action “short of a strike and the days after [RMT] strikes, services could also be affected by a limited number of short-notice cancellations and alterations”.
Customers are advised to check before they travel.
If you purchase tickets for the strike days but do not end up travelling, you can claim a full refund or amend the ticket.
GTR
GTR, also known as Govia Thameslink Railway, is the UK’s biggest railway franchise and operates Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express.
It said an amended timetable with fewer services will run on 29 July and services will be busier than usual.
Great Northern and Thameslink routes north of London will start later and finish much earlier than normal.
GTR said the disruption from the strike will have a knock-on effect the next day, on 30 July, with some routes having no services before 7am.
LNER
London North Eastern Railway has said that it will be running trains on 29 July but “with a reduced timetable.”
“Our trains for all three [strike] days are back on sale, however, they are still subject to change until timetables are confirmed by Network Rail approximately one week before each strike day,” LNER said on its website.
During the ASLEF union’s industrial action, the network said it would run a normal timetable, but there may also be a possibility of “short-notice alterations and cancellations”.
Southeastern
The company has there will be a limited service running on RMT strike days. Some routes will be closed and there are no replacement buses.
With regards to the ASLEF overtime ban, Southeastern said it expects to run a full service during this time, but if the strike action does impact travel, then passengers can get a strike refund.
South Western Railway
Trains will only run between 7am and 7pm on RMT strike days with a “significantly reduced service”.
“Customers are advised to only travel if absolutely necessary,” the company said.
With regards to the ASLEF action, South Western Railway has released a full timetable of services running on those days.
It added: “Services will usually be reduced to hourly in off-peak periods with a small number of cancellations during the morning and evening peaks. Some first and last trains may also be cancelled.”
Transpennine Express
The company warned the RMT strike will cause “significant disruption”.
“Disruption is also likely on days following strike action and you are advised to plan carefully for any rail journeys as services will start later and finish earlier than usual.”
It has said the planned ASLEF action will have some of its services “start later and finish earlier than usual, and some journeys may be altered late or on the day of travel.”
West Midlands Railway
West Midlands Railway said during the RMT strike, it will be running a reduced timetable on these dates and some routes will not be served.
On ASLEF action days, services will be subject to on-the-day changes.
A British fintech which counts Standard Life among its key clients is close to finalising one of the industry’s biggest funding rounds so far this year.
Sky News understands that Hyperlayer, which is run by the former Morgan Stanley executive Rob Rooney, is lining up a major equity injection led by CDAM, a UK-based investment firm, and several new institutional investors.
City sources said this weekend that the new capital from CDAM and other backers could total at least £30m.
The funding round is expected to take place at a post-money valuation of about £160m.
Hyperlayer, which operates a consumer-facing digital wallet called Hyperjar, intends to use the new funding as growth capital to finance the development of new partnerships with global banks and asset managers.
The company provides smart account technology on existing client infrastructure, and is said to work with a number of the world’s 10 largest banks – although it has not publicly disclosed their identities.
Its work with Standard Life involves the future launch of a consumer money app aimed at people approaching or in early retirement.
Hyperlayer’s consumer-facing platform sees customers organise their money in what the company calls “digital jam jars”, enabling them to earn rewards which give them access to partner brands such as Asda, Morrisons and Starbucks.
IKEA and the John Lewis Partnership are among the other merchant partners with which Hyperlayer is working to develop distinctive loyalty-based initiatives for its financial institution clients.
Founded in 2006 by Adam Chamberlain and Scott Davies, CDAM has $1.5bn in assets under management and is an experienced investor in financial services technology.
Mr Davies has had a seat on Hyperlayer’s board for several years.
Mr Rooney, who was a prominent Wall Street executive for years, ultimately serving as Morgan Stanley’s technology operations, joined the company as CEO in 2023.
The new capital injection led by CDAM is understood to be subject to approval by Hyperlayer’s shareholders.
Octopus Energy Group, Britain’s largest residential gas and electricity supplier, is plotting a £10bn demerger of its technology arm that would reinforce its status as one of the country’s most valuable private companies.
Sky News can exclusively reveal that Octopus Energy is close to hiring investment bankers to help formally separate Kraken Technologies from the rest of the group.
The demerger, which would be expected to take place in the next 12 months, would see Octopus Energy’s existing investors given shares in the newly independent Kraken business.
A minority stake in Kraken of up to 20% is expected to be sold to external shareholders in order to help validate the technology platform’s valuation, according to insiders.
One banking source said that Kraken could be valued at as much as $14bn (£10.25bn) in a forthcoming demerger.
Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are among the investment banks invited to pitch for the demerger mandate in recent weeks.
A deal will augment Octopus Energy chief executive Greg Jackson’s paper fortune, and underline his success at building a globally significant British-based company over the last decade.
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Octopus Energy now has 7.5m retail customers in Britain, following its 2022 rescue of the collapsed energy supplier Bulb, and the subsequent acquisition of Shell’s home energy business.
In January, it announced that it had become the country’s biggest supplier – surpassing Centrica-owned British Gas – with a 24% market share.
It also has a further 2.5m customers outside the UK.
Image: Kraken is an operating system licensed to other energy providers, water companies and telecoms suppliers. Pic: Octopus
Sources said a £10bn valuation of Kraken would now imply that the whole group, including the retail supply business, was worth in the region of £15bn or more.
That would be double its valuation of just over a year ago, when the company announced that it had secured new backing from funds Galvanize Climate Solutions and Lightrock.
Shortly before that, former US vice president Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board increased their stakes in Octopus Energy in a transaction valuing the company at $9bn (£7.2bn).
Kraken is an operating system which is licensed to other energy providers, water companies and telecoms suppliers.
It connects all parts of the energy system, including customer billing and the flexible management of renewable generation and energy devices such as heat pumps and electric vehicle batteries.
The business also unlocks smart grids which enable people to use more renewable energy when there is an abundant supply of it.
In the UK, its platform is licensed to Octopus Energy’s rivals EON and EDF Energy, as well as the water company Severn Trent and broadband provider Cuckoo.
Overseas, Kraken serves Origin Energy in Australia, Japan’s Tokyo Gas and Plentitude in countries including France and Greece.
Its biggest coup came recently, when it struck a deal with National Grid in the US to serve 6.5m customers in New York and Massachusetts.
Sources said other major licensing agreements in the US were expected to be struck in the coming months.
Kraken, which is chaired by Gavin Patterson, the former BT Group chief executive, is now contracted to more than 70m customer accounts globally – putting it easily on track to hit a target of 100m by 2027.
Earlier this year, Mr Jackson said that target now risked being seen as “embarrassingly unambitious”.
Last July, Kraken recruited Amir Orad, a former boss of NICE Actimize, a US-listed provider of enterprise software to global banks and Fortune 500 companies, as its first chief executive.
A demerger of Kraken will trigger speculation about an eventual public market listing of the business.
Its growth in the US, and the relative public market valuations of technology companies in New York and London, may put the UK at a disadvantage when Kraken eventually considers where to list.
One key advantage of demerging Kraken from the rest of Octopus Energy Group would be to remove the perception of a conflict of interest among potential customers of the technology platform.
A source said the unified corporate ownership of both businesses had acted as a deterrent to some energy suppliers.
Kraken has also diversified beyond the energy sector, and earlier this year joined a consortium which was exploring a takeover bid for stricken Thames Water.
The boss of Ryanair has told Sky News the president of the European Commission should “quit” if she can’t stop disruption caused by repeated French air traffic control strikes.
Michael O’Leary, the group chief executive of Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, said in an interview with Business Live that Ursula von der Leyen had failed to get to grips, at an EU level, with interruption to overflights following several recent disputes in France.
The latest action began on Thursday and is due to conclude later today, forcing thousands of flights to be delayed and cancelled through French airspace closures.
Mr O’Leary told presenter Darren McCaffrey that French domestic flights were given priority during ATC strikes and other nations, including Italy and Greece, had solved the problem through minimum service legislation.
He claimed that the vast majority of flights, cancelled over two days of action that began on Thursday, would have been able to operate under similar rules.
Mr O’Leary said of the EU’s role: “We continue to call on Ursula von der Leyen – why are you not protecting these overflights, why is the single market for air travel being disrupted by a tiny number of French air traffic controllers?
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Image: Ryanair has cancelled more than 400 flights over two days due to the action in France. File pic: PA
“All we get is a shrug of their shoulders and ‘there’s nothing we can do’. We point out, there is.”
He added: “We are calling on Ursula von der Leyen, who preaches about competitiveness and reforming Europe, if you’re not willing to protect or fix overflights then quit and let somebody more effective do the job.”
The strike is estimated, by the Airlines for Europe lobby group to have led to at least 1,500 cancelled flights, leaving 300,000 travellers unable to make their journeys.
Image: Michael O’Leary believes the EU can take action on competition grounds. Pic: PA
Ryanair itself had axed more than 400 flights so far, Mr O’Leary said. Rival easyJet said on Thursday that it had cancelled 274 services over the two days.
The beginning of July marks the start of the European summer holiday season.
The French civil aviation agency DGAC had already told airlines to cancel 40% of flights covering the three main Paris airports on Friday ahead of the walkout – a dispute over staffing levels and equipment quality.
Mr O’Leary described those safety issues as “nonsense” and said twhile the controllers had a right to strike, they did not have the right to close the sky.
DGAC has warned of delays and further severe disruption heading into the weekend.
Many planes and crews will be out of position.
Mr O’Leary is not alone in expressing his frustration.
The French transport minister Philippe Tabarot has denounced the action and the reasons for it.
“The idea is to disturb as many people as possible,” he said in an interview with CNews.
Passengers are being advised that if your flight is cancelled, the airline must either give you a refund or book you on an alternative flight.
If you have booked a return flight and the outbound leg is cancelled, you can claim the full cost of the return ticket back from your airline.