subject to the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, and it's a little while since I researched the whole TUPE thing, I'm not convinced that TUPE applies where there isn't a contract of employment in place - and I don't think a conditional offer would count as a contract.
I can see this as a flaw with the whole franchise thing.
From a purely business point of view, why would an incumbent franchise holder bother to put money in to training people who will then end up working for the new franchise holder.
The new franchise holder may then inherit a shortage of staff and no new people in training (there have been some suggestions in the public press that Govia Thameslink have been dropped in it by First CC in this way, I'm not qualified to comment.)
And I'm not sure there's any legal obligation on the outgoing operator to hand across any ongoing job applications to the new operator. And there may be data protection issues about them doing so (or they might take the "there might be, we can't be bothered to find out, so we're going to say there are as a reason for not doing anything" sort of approach.)
Don't know what stage Abelio will be at with staffing. No doubt they will already have some sort of team in place preparing for the new franchise, but I'm not well informed enough to guess where they will be at.
Gut feeling is to try and track Abelio's people down and make contact.
Best of luck.
