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The proportion of people travelling by train with season tickets has shrunk to its lowest level since records began.

Just 13% of trips in Great Britain were made using the tickets in the year to the end of March – down from more than a third in the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) said “changing travel patterns” was the reason for the fall, amid a sharp increase in people working from home either full-time or a number of days a week.

Rising ticket prices and complaints over the reliability of rail services have also been blamed.

Season tickets can offer passengers better value for money if they travel on a service five days a week – but an increasing number are no longer doing so.

They include Ashley Holmes, 40, who used to commute daily from his home in the Hampshire town of Fleet to London.

However, since the pandemic, he now works from home for part of the week.

The digital designer told Sky News: “Annual season tickets are just too expensive. My one used to cost around £3,500 – it is currently around £5,000.

“Now I commute to my office three days a week, which still costs a good chunk of my monthly salary. However, it works out slightly cheaper.”

Mr Holmes added: “I wouldn’t mind so much, but the train service I use is often unreliable, as well as sometimes being cramped and uncomfortable.”

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The ORR said a total of 1.6 billion train journeys were made in the 12 months to the end of March – a 16% increase on the previous year.

However, it said the 13% of journeys made using season tickets – down from 17% in 2021/22 and 15% in 2022/23 – was the lowest since such records began in 1987.

The rail industry was historically reliant on many commuters – particularly in south-east England – purchasing expensive annual season tickets for a large chunk of its total revenue.

Train firms have been trying to reverse the downward trend in recent years, including by introducing flexible ticket ranges aimed at commuters who no longer travel five days a week.

However, their take-up has been minimal, and the bundles have also been criticised for offering little or no extra savings.

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From March: Rail fares hiked

A change in the law introduced earlier this year made it easier for staff to request flexible working, and employers are increasingly offering alternative arrangements in attempts to entice talented new staff.

Last year, more than a third of bosses reported an increase in staff working from home, with cost-of-living pressures putting further strain on the price of commuting.

However, changing working patterns have caused struggles for some businesses.

The publishers of the Evening Standard newspaper announced last month that it would scrap its daily print edition amid “substantial losses”, partly because its readership had dropped as more people were working from home.

The ORR also revealed that in the year to the end of March, rail revenue from passengers was £10.3bn – a fall from £12.7bn in 2019/20 before COVID-19 – despite the total number of journeys being made recovering to 93%.

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Asda-owner TDR snaps up former SPAC merger target CorpAcq

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Asda-owner TDR snaps up former SPAC merger target CorpAcq

The private equity owner of Asda has struck a deal to buy a controlling stake in a group which specialises in backing British SMEs.

Sky News has learnt that TDR Capital has agreed to acquire a majority interest in CorpAcq, less than six months after the so-called ‘corporate compounder’ aborted a deal to list in the US.

City sources said this weekend that CorpAcq, which makes roughly £125m in annual profit, was being valued at well over £1bn on an enterprise value basis in the deal with TDR.

Founded in 2006, CorpAcq – which sponsors Sale FC Rugby’s stadium, near its Altrincham base – has amassed a portfolio of more than 40 companies.

It specialises in buy-and-build strategies, with a focus on companies operating in the industrial products and services sectors.

The company’s acquisition blueprint enables SME founders to retain management control while gaining a long-term investment partner offering operational support to those businesses.

CorpAcq’s founder is Simon Orange, brother of the former Take That member Jason and joint-owner of the Sale Sharks.

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In 2023, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) founded by Michael Klein, one of Wall Street’s leading financiers, announced a $1.5bn plan to take CorpAcq public.

The merger was called off in August last year, with Mr Klein’s vehicle Churchill Capital VII citing difficult IPO market conditions.

Banking sources said that TDR and CorpAcq had entered discussions well after the SPAC deal was abandoned.

The deal, which could be announced within weeks, is the latest to be struck by TDR, which also counts the pubs giant Stonegate and David Lloyd Leisure among its portfolio of investments.

A spokesman for TDR declined to comment.

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Poundland owner drafts in advisers amid discounter crisis

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Poundland owner drafts in advisers amid discounter crisis

The owner of Poundland, one of Britain’s biggest discount retailers, has drafted in City advisers to explore radical options for arresting the growing crisis at the chain.

Sky News has learnt that Pepco Group, which has owned Poundland since 2016, has hired consultants from AlixPartners to address a sales slump which has raised questions over its future ownership.

City sources said this weekend that the crisis would prompt Pepco to explore more fundamental for Poundland, including a formal restructuring process that could prompt significant store closures, or even an attempt to sell the business.

AlixPartners is understood to have been formally engaged last week, with options including a company voluntary arrangement or restructuring plan said to have been floated by a range of advisers on a highly preliminary basis.

Sources close to the group said no decisions had been taken, and that the immediate focus was on improving Poundland’s cash performance and reviving the chain’s customer proposition.

A sale process was not under way, they added.

Poundland trades from 825 stores across the UK, competing with the likes of Home Bargains, B&M and Poundstretcher, as well as Britain’s major supermarket chains.

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Last year, the British discounter recorded roughly €2bn of sales.

It employs roughly 18,000 people.

Earlier this week, Pepco Group, the Warsaw-listed retail giant which also trades as Pepco and Dealz in Europe, said Poundland had seen a like-for-like sales slump of 7.3% during the Christmas trading period.

In its trading statement, Pepco said that Poundland had suffered “a more difficult sales environment and consumer backdrop in the UK, alongside margin pressure and an increasingly higher operating cost environment”.

“We expect that the toughest comparative quarter for Poundland is now behind us – the same quarter last year represented a period prior to the changes made within our clothing and GM [general merchandise] ranges – and therefore, we expect the negative sales performance for Poundland to moderate as we move through the year.”

It added that Poundland would not increase the size of its store portfolio on a net basis during the course of this year.

“We are continuing a comprehensive assessment of Poundland to recover trading and get the business back to its core strengths, including undertaking a thorough assessment of all costs across the business, as well as evaluating its overall competitive positioning,” it added.

The appointment of AlixPartners came several weeks after Stephan Borchert, the Pepco Group chief executive, said he would consider “every strategic option” for reviving Poundland’s performance.

He is expected to set out formal plans for the future of Poundland, along with the rest of the group, at a capital markets day in Poland on 6 March.

Among the measures the company has already taken to halt the chain’s declining performance have been to increase the range of FMCG and general merchandise products sold at its traditional £1 price-point.

Poundland’s crisis contrasts with the health of the rest of the group, with Pepco and Dealz both showing strong sales growth.

A spokesman for Pepco Group, which has a market capitalisation equivalent to about £1.7bn, declined to comment further on the appointment of advisers

AlixPartners also declined to comment.

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FTSE 100 closes at record high

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FTSE 100 closes at record high

The UK’s benchmark stock index has reached another record high.

The FTSE 100 index of most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange closed at 8,505.69, breaking the record set last May.

It had already broken its intraday high at 8532.58 on Friday afternoon, meaning it reached a high not seen before during trading hours.

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The weakened pound has boosted many of the 100 companies forming the top-flight index.

Why is this happening?

Most are not based in the UK, so a less valuable pound means their sterling-priced shares are cheaper to buy for people using other currencies, typically US dollars.

This makes the shares better value, prompting more to be bought. This greater demand has brought up the prices and the FTSE 100.

The pound has been hovering below $1.22 for much of Friday. It’s steadily fallen from being worth $1.34 in late September.

Also spurring the new record are market expectations for more interest rate cuts in 2025, something which would make borrowing cheaper and likely kickstart spending.

What is the FTSE 100?

The index is made up of many mining and international oil and gas companies, as well as household name UK banks and supermarkets.

Familiar to a UK audience are lenders such as Barclays, Natwest, HSBC and Lloyds and supermarket chains Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s.

Other well-known names include Rolls-Royce, Unilever, easyJet, BT Group and Next.

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FTSE stands for Financial Times Stock Exchange.

If a company’s share price drops significantly it can slip outside of the FTSE 100 and into the larger and more UK-based FTSE 250 index.

The inverse works for the FTSE 250 companies, the 101st to 250th most valuable firms on the London Stock Exchange. If their share price rises significantly they could move into the FTSE 100.

A good close for markets

It’s a good end of the week for markets, entirely reversing the rise in borrowing costs that plagued Chancellor Rachel Reeves for the past ten days.

Fears of long-lasting high borrowing costs drove speculation she would have to cut spending to meet self-imposed fiscal rules to balance the budget and bring down debt by 2030.

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They Treasury tries to calm market nerves late last week

Long-term government borrowing had reached a high not seen since 1998 while the benchmark 10-year cost of government borrowing, as measured by 10-year gilt yields, was at levels last seen around the 2008 financial crisis.

The gilt yield is effectively the interest rate investors demand to lend money to the UK government.

Only the pound has yet to recover the losses incurred during the market turbulence. Without that dropped price, however, the FTSE 100 record may not have happened.

Also acting to reduce sterling value is the chance of more interest rates. Currencies tend to weaken when interest rates are cut.

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