Quite frankly, I think that £26k is an eye-watering sum for what seems to be a very minor brand refresh and I hope that there is more to come.
It may well be that some of that cost is to purchase the rights to the ‘N’ circle emblem from Arriva which could be handled by the design agency. In this instance you’d be saving a pretty penny by not replacing the logo everywhere. Changing the typeface is a necessity in order to distance from the rest of the Arriva brand.
With respect to the people on this forum, unless you have branding experience (and I mean real experience, not just designing a logo for this thread or your mate’s cafe) I don’t think it’s fair for you to suggest that it’s “easy” to design a logo for a business. All the options I’ve seen in this thread so far have lacked modernity, professional polish and shown no regard to the heritage or aspiration of the brand. There’s a reason branding people charge a lot and it’s not just for dreaming something up in Photoshop.
If the DfT are paying to buy the branding then that's pure incompetence. The aim was for the brand to be owned by the DfT and transferred between TOCs so Arriva should never have owned it!
I agree with you that there is probably more to come in terms of the brand refresh. I also agree with you that changing the typeface is needed. But if some of the better designs on this forum lack "professional polish" can you explain how professional polish involves failing to match the height of the logo and the name, leaving a huge space between the logo and name and having the glaring inconsistency of lower case in the logo and upper case in the name?
Regarding the heritage of the Northern brand: what heritage? Northern is famous for several failed timetable changes, a year or more of strikes on Saturdays, getting rid of the Pacers months later than planned, retaining 1980s rolling stock in service with a mild interior refresh and having filthy trains and stations.
I think you are missing the point of the designs on this forum. Nobody is claiming it is easy to design a good coherent brand. They are claiming (and I agree with them) that Northern's new design looks cheap, rushed and unprofessional, and that what they've done can be replicated or improved upon without a lot of effort.