East Coast Main Line - lessons learned review

In February 2010 we issued directions on three applications and approved a fourth granting three passenger train operators - East Coast, Grand Central and Hull Trains - the rights to operate additional and/or amended services on the East Coast Main Line (ECML). This was the culmination of two years work, the details of which can be found on the "East Coast Main Line capacity assessment and competing applications" page.

We are carrying out a review into the process, and whilst the industry is well aware that difficulties were encountered at various stages along the way, we believe that, overall, the process took too long. If we are to learn from this we need to look constructively at the whole process, including ORR’s own areas of responsibility, in order to establish:

  • what went well;
  • what went less well;
  • how the process could be improved in future; and
  • what the industry could have done differently, with the benefit of hindsight.

There may well be some read-across between this and the issues currently being addressed by the industry’s review of access planning. The industry’s consultation document (PDF) invited responses by 19 March 2010.

Brian Kogan is leading the review and we aim to produce a report by the end of June. We wrote to the industry on 5 March 2010 and subsequently arranged a series of meetings with a representative sample of interested stakeholders, including Network Rail, the ECML passenger and freight operators, Passenger Focus, London TravelWatch, the Department for Transport and Transport Scotland.

Our letter and written responses follow, and subsequent documentation will be added as it becomes available.

Our letter to the industry

Responses received

The documents below can be downloaded as PDF files.

Our report

Glossary