Our role is to protect the interests of rail users, including ensuring that those responsible make Britain's railways safe for passengers and provide a safe place for staff to work. In order to achieve this, one of ORR’s key day-to-day functions to provide safety certification and the licensing for companies to operate on Britain’s railways.
This was brought into focus earlier this month, when the Secretary of State announced that operation of services on East Coast Mainline would move from Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC) to a new company – London North East Railway (LNER). Just like any other company, LNER needs to have safety certification and be licensed in when it takes over on June 24th.
Teams at ORR, working closely with the Department of Transport, have been working to deliver those:
- our safety team is progressing the necessary safety certificate applications and authorisation documents;
- the access and licensing teams are ensuring that standby licenses to operate trains, stations and depots, and network access agreements are in place;
- and our consumer team is confirming that proper complaints handling and disabled persons’ protection policies are arranged.
Safety certification, licensing, and access arrangements are ‘business as usual’ for ORR; teams deliver these constantly throughout the year. In 2016/17 alone we issued over five thousand train driver licenses, authorised three new stations, 24 items of rolling stock and hundreds of new or amended access contracts. That work carries on quietly in the background – but when a significant change such as the transfer of operation on a line comes about, colleagues here are able to facilitate the change quickly and efficiently.
If you’d like to know more about our work on safety certification or access and licensing, there is information on our website.