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Update 1470 12 May 2026	HOPS Succession Planning Part 2 At the end of April I circulated by HOPS Succession Planning email. If you haven't seen the contents of that, it can be found here: https://www.hops.org.uk/update/1406 Here is an update. -------------------- Thank you to everyone who has replied to my email about succession planning in HOPS. I received a number of responses that I wasn't expecting, so I thought it would be useful to update everyone. Particularly thank you to those who have raised concerns and have given time to discussing them and exploring potential mitigations. As many of you will know from when we have discussed developments, I do believe that if you discuss something long enough you eventually find the right solution, even if just be eliminating all the wrong ones! So it is nice that many Admins have been willing to go through that discussion time. A key message to give is that I am fully open to hearing ideas that supplement or are completely different to what I said in my last email. Some new ideas have already been offered, thank you for those, but if anyone else is thinking of options or potential better ways of going about this then please do let me know. I also encourage Admins to speak to each other if they want to and discuss opinions. The objective here for all of us is for HOPS to thrive in the best way possible for railways. What has been expressed can be summarised into concern that HOPS's independence from railways will be lost when it is owned by railways, and a concern that a large number of different railways might try to steer development in conflicting directions. Of course everyone has a different view on what would be the best direction. I know that some of the alternative ideas on ways forward being discussed mitigate this, and might achieve a preferable balance of ownership for railways to have confidence in the decision-making. I'll circulate those if asked. For clarity, it was my intention that the owner railways would appoint a smaller board to do the actual steering, rather than every decision being an opportunity for division, much like how shareholders appoint the board of heritage railways. And I am hopeful that everyone will subscribe to the view that they always have in the past that everyone gets 90% of what they want, and sacrifices the 10% for the greater good. Here are some other FAQs: * What is the timescale? This will be dependent on how the next few weeks go, but I think getting the plans in place in the next three months, and the changeover being a gradual process over the three months following that is probable. There will be plenty of comms, and plenty of hand-over to the new management. I am conscious of minimising the timescale to reduce uncertainty for railways. * Why is this change necessary? I did not go into great detail in my original message, but since many of you have asked I will elaborate here. It is a purely personal thing rather than a business thing. All of us get to a point in jobs where we feel it is time for a change. I have always built and promoted HOPS as a 'best practice' system, and one that I could say I believed railways "should" be using. I don't see it as a software development service that blindly builds whatever is asked. Of course the majority of that best-practice and requests for development have come from the user community, which is great, but they have always been evaluated against criteria of whether we believed they were appropriate to the extent that we could encourage other railways to use them. In many cases, long discussions took place that exploited the experience of the individual railway, HOPS's experience of all the other railways, and my professional background in railway operations and safety. This has all be a great way to achieve good developments, and that is what I have enjoyed. In recent years it has become apparent that some railways have come to expect HOPS to be much more like a software service that is expected to do as its told, because "the customer is always right" (quote), and are sometimes offended at the mere prospect of requests being subject to discussion, let alone negotiation. This isn't the operation that I want to run, or where my skills lie. * Will you still be involved? I intend to make myself available to the new management for advice or background into why we built things the way we did or what risks we considered/mitigated in order that they can make the decisions with all the information - it is important not to lose that corporate memory. I do want HOPS to continue and to flourish, so I will offer whatever help as best I can. But I don't intend to be in charge of it or involved in the day-to-day running. There is a good team that delivers HOPS, it is not all just me, so don't be alarmed it'll be a case of totally starting from scratch. https://www.hops.org.uk/about_team.php I will still be a user of HOPS in my other companies that make use of it. * Will there be a share issue prospectus? No, I don't intend to produce a prospectus, or to spend time trying to /persuade/ railways to become involved. Despite its rising income, HOPS should be considered as essentially a not-for-profit business. Only take part if you want to be part of something that helps heritage railways, and hopefully locally saves the cost of time and effort, rather than in the hope of a cash financial return. I'll be happy to share financial information etc though with interested railways. * Are suggestions of alternative plans / ideas allowed? Yes, all ideas welcome. They will either be relevant to me or for discussion by interested railways. * Would it be better if HOPS continued to be an independent commercial operation? Maybe. And this would protect you from the concerns of other railways having a formal steer on the direction of HOPS, but expose you to the owners of that company being in control. Ultimately someone has to be in charge. There are some discussions taking place (by others) which may explore this further, which I’ll make sure are shared if asked. I encourage all options to be examined. * Is there a deadline for expressions of interest? Please try to let me know by the end of May. If you're waiting for other dependencies, eg board meetings, then let me know and I'll know you're a 'maybe' rather than a 'not interested'. If anyone has any other concerns or ideas please let me know. Thank you Danny Scroggins
Update 1414 30 April 2026	Succession Planning An email was circulated about succession planning on 30 April. If you have not seen it you can view the content here: https://www.hops.org.uk/update/1406 I have received a lot of interesting responses and questions, so I will issue some more comms on this soon. Thank you to everyone who has responded.
Update 1406 30 April 2026	HOPS Succession Planning We are formalising the succession plan for HOPS, to make sure that it has a sustainable future in delivering services for heritage railways. It has previously been discussed that a second company would be set up, with distributed ownership, to eventually take over the operations of HOPS. However, it has been identified that it would instead be more straightforward to 'nationalise' the original HOPS company itself by arranging for the railways and organisations that use it to have an ownership stake in it instead. Therefore we are going to make this our objective, to the point where /control/ is in the hands of railways. Companies that use HOPS will soon be able to become shareholders in HOPS, and those companies will be able to arrange and control the management of HOPS and therefore the direction of development and investment. They will also set the level of subscriptions fees for shareholder and non-shareholder subscribers, and be owners of a company with a growing retail systems income that has great ability to support heritage railways in the future. Shares will be limited to one per company, to avoid one company being able to unilaterally control the whole system. The cost of a share will be proportional to the size of the business, in the same way that subscription fees have always been, and is expected to be in the area of 1.2x the Advanced HOPS annual subscription fee for the each railway. It is envisaged that my (Danny's) role in HOPS will decrease in the future, as the new railway-appointed management takes over, to the point where it is completely controlled by its new shareholders. To this end, railways are now invited to express interest in acquiring shares in Heritage Operations Processing Ltd which owns the HOPS system, including the public-facing retail systems, the Raildays system, website and mobile app. This is an opportunity for all railways to have a stake-hold in the future direction of HOPS, and gain confidence in ensuring it survives in the long term for everyone's benefit. Once expressions of interest are obtained, we will arrange a meeting for a future plan and management structure and company structure to be created. Please express your company's interest to danny.scroggins@hops.org.uk If necessary, please forward this information to the railway's General Manager or other person who is in a position to make a decision on this. It is important that, especially if not taking part, railways have made that decision consciously. In the meantime, HOPS remains 'business as usual', where we continue to work hard and invest in system developments and supporting heritage railways in every way that we can. It has been my great pleasure to lead HOPS for the last 17 years, and I give my thanks to everyone who has collaborated with us on developments over the years. I hope this new approach and structure will make HOPS even more useful for the future, and I encourage everyone to take part in it. Thank you Danny Scroggins