The whole Northern refubishment programme is a joke. Poor design choices, poor build quality, lies about customer preference on seat choice, not dealing with historic problems such as acute lack of legroom on some train types, taking absolutely ages, stupid use of flat cloth, dreadful gibberish PIS, trains dirty very quickly, bad cleaning regime meaning refubished sets look naff already.
Merseyrail were able to do a vastly superior job with an older fleet and SWT/Southern stock from the same era looks and feels much better from a refurb undertaken many years ago now. That stock is about to be replaced.
It would be nice to think the remainder of the programme could be improved if the franchise is taken in house. There will be loads of suitable seats coming from ex SWT and Merseyrail services soon that would be an upgrade on the seats on most of the Northern fleet. They should just use those to save cash whilst delivering something that is actually objectively better.