Regulator’s plan to ensure a ‘great deal’ from Great Britain’s railways

1 May 2012
ORR/05/12

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has set out its plan for this financial year, focused on bringing the rail industry together to ensure high levels of safety, delivering more for customers and reducing costs.

The regulator’s business plan for 2012-13, ‘A great deal from Britain’s railways – safe, reliable, efficient’, sets out three clear priorities which will guide ORR’s work throughout the year ahead: 

• Reducing the industry’s costs. Driving down costs is key to delivering better value for money in the rail industry. In particular, ORR will focus on aligning incentives and supporting more industry collaboration through the Periodic Review of Network Rail’s outputs and funding requirements. The regulator will provide more information than ever before, through benchmarking of performance standards and value for money, and publication of new disaggregated data at route and service level.
• A sharper focus on customers. ORR will work to demonstrate its effectiveness in improving the experience of passengers and freight customers, developing its role to put passengers at the heart of what it does and taking forward the recommendations of the independent capability review. The regulator will drive greater transparency across the industry particularly on costs, and the provision of greater rail performance data will help users customers make better-informed choices.
• Excellence in safety culture and management across the industry. The regulator will continue to take a zero tolerance approach to industry-caused fatalities, working towards ever-decreasing safety risks across the whole industry.

ORR Chief Executive Richard Price said:

“This is a pivotal year for Great Britain’s railways. Decisions we take this year, as part of our Periodic Review of Network Rail’s outputs and funding, will shape the direction of travel for our railways into the next decade. As Great Britain’s railways flourish with massive investment and booming passenger numbers, we need to maintain our focus on improving value for money and ensuring safety, while placing the customer at the heart of everything we do.

“Collaborative working across the rail industry is the key to success. A focus of our work over the coming year will therefore be in developing the right incentives and providing more information aimed at ensuring the whole industry – Network Rail, train operators, rolling-stock companies and the wider supply chain - works better together.

“I am pleased to see businesses across the railway improving the way they work together through, for example, ‘alliances’ between Network and train operating companies and Network Rail’s devolution of key functions to new rail regions across Britain.

“As we look to the railway to improve performance, so too will ORR focus on improving its capacity and capability. This will ensure that we do everything we can to improve value for money, customer service and safety across the rail industry as a whole.”

Notes to editors

1. ORR’s Business Plan 2012-2013 is available on the regulator’s website: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/business-plan-2012-13.pdf

ORR media relations

020 7282 2094.