Stewardship of the national rail network – performance and monitoring

29 November 2004
ORR/47/04

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has today issued its first annual statement on the performance of Network Rail as the steward of the rail network, together with a comprehensive monitoring programme for Network Rail’s future stewardship of the main national network.

The Statement on Network Rail’s Stewardship of the National Rail Network 2003–04 is an evaluation of the extent to which Network Rail met the stewardship requirements of its network licence, regulatory targets, and those targets identified in its business plan for April 2003 to March 2004. It also comments on significant developments in the first half of the year 2004–05.

Chris Bolt, Chairman of ORR, said:

“The statement’s principal message is that Network Rail has started to get control of management of the network infrastructure, and to address the decline highlighted by the Hatfield accident. However, the company needs to do much more on delivery, measuring efficiencies, and asset data quality, and it will be some time before the network is restored to pre-Hatfield performance.”

The second statement by ORR on Network Rail’s stewardship of the national rail network will be published in the autumn of 2005, based on regulatory targets set at the access charges review 2003, which took effect in April 2004.         

The consultation document Network Rail Monitor sets out a regulatory calendar for the scrutiny of Network Rail’s business plan and delivery against it. This includes an annual return, regulatory accounts, and a quarterly statement. This statement will be presented as a balanced scorecard of high-level indicators that measure the extent to which Network Rail is achieving improvements and targets in a number of key areas of performance, namely:

  • safety;
  • train performance;
  • asset performance;
  • activity volumes;
  • finance;
  • customer satisfaction, and
  • supplier satisfaction.

The views of consultees are sought on whether these indicators are the right ones, whether they need to be expanded to reflect Network Rail’s broader responsibilities following the Government’s rail review, and the frequency with which they should be published. ORR proposes to publish Network Rail Monitor quarterly on the ORR website. 


Notes for editors

  1. Statement on Network Rail’s Stewardship of the National Rail Network 2003–04 is available from the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/217.pdf and also available from the ORR Librarian, Sue MacSwan, 1 Waterhouse Square, 138–142 Holborn, London EC1N 2TQ, tel: 020 7282 2001, fax: 020 7282 2045, e-mail: rail.library@orr.gsi.gov.uk.
  2. The consultation document Network Rail Monitor is available from the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/218.pdf and also available from the ORR Librarian, at the above address.
  3. Implementing The Future of Rail: ORR’s Role and Proposed Work Programme is available from the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/211.pdf and also available from the ORR Librarian, at the above address.
  4. Network Rail’s Annual Return 2004 – Reporting on the year 2003–04 is available at http://www.networkrail.co.uk/documents/2004%20annual%20return.pdf.

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