Following an ‘extensive investigation into declining punctuality’ on key parts of Britain’s railways, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has found Network Rail in breach of its licence and has proposed two enforcement orders requiring the company to develop new robust plans to help recover performance.
ORR has found that Network Rail:
- Is ‘contravening its network licence in respect of declining performance in the freight sector. The company has not only missed its performance target – currently freight delays are 32% worse than the end of year target – but is not doing all it can to reach this target’.
- Is likely to ‘contravene its network licence in respect of deteriorating performance of long distance passenger services. Long distance punctuality is currently 87.1%, well short of the regulatory target of 90.9%. Network Rail has admitted it is not able to deliver the target this year, and is also likely to miss next year’s. ORR needs to be satisfied that Network Rail is doing everything reasonably practicable to achieve its targets, but has been hindered by the lack of robust quantification of initiatives and projections in the plans the company has produced’.
Richard Price, ORR’s Chief Executive, said:
“Rail customers expect high levels of train punctuality. Network Rail has achieved a lot in recent years, but while it signed up to improve performance year-on-year, its performance is now worsening.
“The company must do everything reasonably practicable to reach its targets and needs to deliver robust plans to prove that it is tackling declining performance, working with train operators to put things right.
“Factors outside Network Rail’s control have contributed to the performance gap, but they do not account for the whole of the discrepancy.
“Our investigation found that the recent deterioration in performance is down to factors including major asset failures, congested routes and poor management of track condition, in addition to external factors like cable theft.
“Network Rail must shoulder the responsibility for any weakness in its performance. I am also today encouraging passenger and freight operators to work with Network Rail to get the most out of the network for customers.”
The enforcement orders require Network Rail to work with the relevant passenger operators to produce, by the end of February 2012, ‘robust plans showing that it is doing everything reasonably practicable to deliver the performance commitments for long distance services in 2012-2013’.
The regulator has also called on Network Rail to establish a ‘recovery board’ for freight performance at which the freight operators can call on the company to take specific measures to tackle performance for freight services – the first time such a mechanism has been used.
After further extensive investigation, ORR has decided that Network Rail is not in breach of its licence with regard to performance in Scotland and has robust plans in place to achieve improvements.
This means that the regulator will be taking no formal action at this stage, but will be watching closely to ensure improvements are made.
