Listening to our stakeholders

We hold stakeholder events, regular meetings and issue surveys to gather stakeholder feedback. This all helps us to understand stakeholder priorities and to gather feedback on what stakeholders think of what we’re doing. It also helps to shape our plans for the future - we welcome ideas from all our stakeholders.

Stakeholder conferences 2025

Thank you to everyone who attended our November 2025 stakeholder conference events. Please find the presentation materials below:

Liverpool conference slides

York conference slides

Accessibility workshop

Our fleet workshop

If you would like a copy of these presentations in a different format, please email: [email protected] 

Stakeholder surveys

Our annual stakeholder survey took place over December 2025 – January 2026. We received responses from 1 in 3 stakeholders and 68% of participants have had a relationship with Northern for at least six years. The feedback given by participants is very important to us and below we have summarised the main survey findings.

Strengths

Feedback through the survey indicates that over the past year Northern has been good at maintaining strong stakeholder relationships, communicating and engaging with stakeholders. Satisfaction with relationships is an area where we score very highly – satisfaction is above 90%. Communication and keeping stakeholders informed is a strength that stands out this year, with stakeholders valuing the variety of information available to them. Stakeholders also recognised that we understand their needs and are helpful when they need problems solving. 

Weaknesses

Similarly to last year, stakeholders indicate that operational performance and cancellations are our areas for improvement. Sunday services have been the focus surrounding our poor performance this year. Another area that was suggested for improvement was internal communication. 
We are focusing on both areas as a business. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to ensure our performance is continually improving. At the stakeholder conferences, a performance update was given. The slides from these conferences are linked at the top of this page. 

Other findings

Our findings indicate that operational performance should be our top priority. However, the survey also reveals that we should be focusing on staffing issues and rolling stock closely too. Going forward, we will share progress against our performance goals of 90/2 and 30 by 30. We will continue with our current level of engagement and communications from the stakeholder team. 

If you would like to know more about this survey please contact Claire Glavina [email protected]