Office of Rail Regulation consults on updated corporate strategy
15 December 2005
ORR/47/05
The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has today published, for consultation, an update to its corporate strategy, setting out its objectives and priorities for the next 3 years. The strategy sets out how ORR will carry out its combined safety and economic regulation functions following passage of the Railways Act 2005, while taking account of emerging developments over the past year.
Chris Bolt, ORR Chairman, said:
“With the growth in freight and passenger demand, the railway has a great opportunity to play a bigger and more effective role in meeting transport needs in the UK. ORR wants to encourage and help the railway industry to grasp that opportunity. But to do so will require continuous improvement in safety, performance and customer service, alongside relentless improvement in efficiency and elimination of unnecessary costs. This will only be achieved if Network Rail, operators, suppliers and funders can work together in partnership to meet the needs of passengers and freight customers and deliver a safe, high performing, efficient and developing railway.”
The 2005 Railways Act reinforced the role of the independent regulator, both by merging economic and safety regulation, and by clarifying the role of Ministers (including Scottish Ministers) in specifying high level outputs and funding in ORR’s periodic reviews of Network Rail’s access charges.
For the period 2006-2009, ORR’s focus will be on:
- enforcing and developing health and safety legislation for the railways;
- monitoring and enforcing delivery of committed outputs, especially Network Rail;
- determining Network Rail’s allowed revenue to reflect the cost of outputs specified by government; and
- setting and influencing the terms of key relationships in the national railway, and acting as a competition authority for the railway industry.
Chris Bolt continued:
“Our approach to safety regulation will build on the policies of the Health and Safety Commission/Executive. We believe that the industry can and should achieve continuous improvement in health and safety performance, and seek more efficient ways of delivering a safe railway including eliminating unnecessary costs.
“Our 2008 Periodic Review, and our monitoring and review work prior to this, will focus on improving efficiency and performance to facilitate development of the railway.“Network Rail plays a particularly vital role in improving the railway and making it more responsive to the needs of customers and funders. Much progress has been made towards making the company a more efficient and better-performing infrastructure provider, but it now needs to go further in its industry leadership role as envisaged in the Rail Review – working proactively with its industry partners to deliver the best overall result for customers and funders. Facilitating this, and ensuring it happens, will be taken forward by ORR as a key priority.”
Notes for editors:
- The consultation period for this document closes on 23 February 2006.
- ORR is expected to assume responsibility for rail safety regulation in April 2006.
- A copy of the consultation document, Updating our Corporate Strategy – A Consultation is available from the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/263.pdf.
- As part of the consultation on this corporate strategy, ORR welcomes the opportunity to meet stakeholders, and is in the process of arranging meetings with stakeholder representatives and groupings.
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