‘We can’t be at the bottom indefinitely’: Can Britain’s most maligned service station be turned around?

Hartshead Moor East, near Leeds, was voted Britain’s worst motorway service station in both 2022 and 2023. Its manager, Janine Gray, and her team faced public ridicule, and set out to improve the site’s reputation and avoid a third consecutive last-place result.

The annual Transport Focus survey is a large operation, with more than 30,000 members of the public questioned over seven weeks and almost every service station visited at least five times. The article contrasts Hartshead Moor’s poor ranking with Rugby services, which opened in 2021 and topped the survey in 2022 and 2023, and examines what these rankings mean to the people who work at service stations.