ORR’s day job of regulating the rail and road industries to protect the interests of current and future users covers a huge range of activities throughout the year, from health and safety inspection and enforcement to new train authorisations and holding the industries to account on better customer service.
We will continue to carry out these crucial frontline activities with excellence and independence. There are, however, three discrete and important pieces of work coming up in 2024-2025 to ensure value for money for the travelling public, taxpayers and wider stakeholders.
Firstly, this year marks the start of the new five-year control period for Network Rail. We will be putting a new monitoring framework in place to hold the company to account for delivering the train performance and other outcomes that we required in return for the approximately £43 billion of real terms funding approved for its operation, maintenance and renewal of the network.
Secondly, we have a large piece of work to do on roads, looking at the future efficiency of National Highways under the third Road Investment Strategy and we will be checking that plans for England’s strategic road network between 2025 and 2030 are efficient and deliverable.
And thirdly, we will be carrying out our periodic review of the High Speed 1 rail network to scrutinise its future costs and outputs for the five-year period starting in 2025. This review will have an additional dimension now that two companies have publicly announced that they intend to apply for access rights to compete with Eurostar to provide services between London and the Continent.
Of course, there will be a general election during this business year and that requires us to be flexible and adaptive. ORR has always been good at responding positively to change, and we stand ready to provide independent advice as appropriate.
I know that my colleagues at ORR will, as ever, deliver this year’s programme of work with efficiency and diligence and I thank them for their continued hard work and professionalism. We are committed to continuing to develop and support our people to provide an effective level of oversight and assurance now and in the future.