Network Rail Monitor

Welcome to the home page of the Network Rail Monitor. We publish this document every three months and it is part of how we hold Network Rail to account.

The Monitor sets out in plain English how we think Network Rail is doing in delivering its obligations to its customers and funders, and highlights any areas of concern.

Network Rail Monitor key statistics publication dates are also available.

The latest Monitor is for Q3 2012-13:

Download Network Rail Monitor Q3 2012-13 ( PDF 952 Kb)
Published 20 February 2013
Download Network Rail Monitor (Scotland) Q3 2012-13 ( PDF 580 Kb)
Published 20 February 2013

A summary of what is in the downloadable PDF of the Network Rail Monitor follows below. Click on the headings to navigate to the main sections of the publication.

Overview

This issue covers Network Rail’s performance across Great Britain from mid-October to early January and also some recent developments. We focus mainly on England and Wales as we publish a separate edition covering issues particular to Scotland ( PDF PDF 580 Kb).

Passenger train performance

Punctuality as a whole in England and Wales was 88%, as measured by the Public Performance Measure (PPM); 2 percentage points worse than expected and 1.4 percentage points worse than this time last year.

Network Rail is not recovering punctuality in the Long Distance sector as quickly as it should. It ended the quarter 3 percentage points lower than expected. The company now forecasts that by the end of March 2014, it will be 2 percentage points short of the 92% punctuality level it was funded to deliver. It also expects to be 1 percentage point short of its 93% punctuality target for the London and South East sector. These shortfalls will make Network Rail’s task in the next control period more difficult.

We have concerns about Network Rail’s resilience in dealing with recent weather conditions and are raising this urgently. Although it did much to recover weather-related delays, there were other factors affecting performance such as some significant engineering overruns. We want a full account from Network Rail about how it will improve its performance in future.

Freight train performance

Although still below target, performance in the freight sector is almost 12% better than a year ago. But there is no room for complacency; Network Rail must continue to work closely with its freight customers to deliver their recovery plan target (of 3.33 delay minutes per 100km) or better by the end of March.

Asset management

Asset management has been a long-term concern and we need reassurance that resources are in place to manage assets competently and efficiently into the future. We are satisfied that the company has now completed all the high priority assessments of the load-carrying capacity of its bridges and has plans for completing the rest.

The derailment at Barrow-upon-Soar is another significant incident to add to Network Rail’s growing list of embankment and cutting failures. We have challenged it to find the cause of the derailment and learn from it. Although we are treating this initially as a safety issue, the embankment failure raises asset management issues and we are concerned that no precursor indicators were picked up by the maintenance inspection regime.

Developing the network

Network Rail completed its part of the East London Line work over Christmas allowing new trains to run between Highbury & Islington and Clapham Junction. Passengers are also beginning to see improvements from other enhancement programmes, such as longer platforms at the southern end of the East Coast main line. The demolition of the Wyke bridge, near Andover in Hampshire, has increased the gauge clearance for freight trains on the Southampton-Basingstoke diversionary route - a key step for the Strategic Freight Network.

Last updated: 20 February 2013