Train drivers in the UK now earn an average of £76,327 a year, up from £63,970 last year. Photo / Getty Images
Train drivers in the UK now earn an average of £76,327 a year, up from £63,970 last year. Photo / Getty Images
Train drivers now have one of the top 10 best-paid jobs in Britain after being handed double-digit pay rises last year.
Data from the Office for National Statistics show that train drivers are on average paid more than head teachers, senior police officers, and communications directors.
ONS figures show thattrain and tram drivers now earn an average of £76,327 ($176,743) a year, up from £63,970 last year.
This places train driving in eighth place out of 339 occupations with comparable data, up from 11th last year.
Average pay for drivers puts them just £120 behind financial managers (£76,447) and commercial airline pilots (£82,746).
It puts them comfortably before professions such as clinical psychologists (£58,366) and lawyers (£56,977).
Senior police officers’ wages are almost £10,000 less than those of train drivers, averaging £66,690, while head teachers typically earn £71,008. PR and communications directors are paid an average of £72,887.
Richard Holden blames Labour for ‘gold-plated salaries for fewer trains, more strikes and endless disruption’. Photo / Getty Images
“Thanks to spineless Labour’s no-strings-attached, inflation-busting 15% pay deal for their union paymasters, train drivers are better paid than head teachers, senior police officers, and surgeons and per hour almost certainly more than the Prime Minister,” Richard Holden, the shadow transport secretary, said.
“While private sector workers face the slowest wage growth in four years, Labour has handed the RMT and Aslef gold-plated salaries for fewer trains, more strikes and endless disruption.
“Labour don’t have the backbone to stand up to the unions, leaving taxpayers and passengers to pay the price. The Conservatives will end this stitch-up, stand up to the strike barons and put commuters first.”
The figures come from the ONS’ annual survey of employee earnings and measure the gross average income of fulltime workers across the UK.
The survey uses the median average to ensure that industries with very high salaries among senior workers do not overly influence the results.
Just under a third of all trains across the country were delayed during the first three months of this year, according to the latest official statistics from the Office of Rail and Road.
Around 3% of services were cancelled, a slight increase compared with the same three-month period in 2024.
Labour agreed to a 15% pay rise for train drivers across the country in summer 2024, one of their very first acts in office after winning that year’s general election.
Official estimates given to Parliament suggested this would cost the taxpayer £135 million. Drivers’ salaries are paid by taxpayers via subsidies given to train companies.
Last year, taxpayers subsidised the rail industry by just under £12 billion.
Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary who handed out last year’s pay rises, abruptly quit last year after it emerged that she had pleaded guilty to misleading the police a decade ago in relation to reports of a lost work phone.
Heidi Alexander, her successor, went on to say that the pay rises had made rail delays worse as drivers stopped accepting overtime payments.
Drivers declining overtime shifts causes delays because the rail industry as a whole relies on staff working overtime to keep all of its shifts covered.
The Government went on to offer £600-per-shift overtime bonuses in the hope of tempting drivers back to work over Christmas last year.
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