Capacity charge for franchise and open access passenger for CP5

Date published: 25 September 2013
Closing date: 30 September 2013

The purpose of this letter is to:

  • make the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) aware of the legal advice we have received with respect to implementing forms of the capacity charge (including
    RDG     's proposed option); and
  • update RDG and the industry on our further thinking on the capacity charge, with a refinement of our proposed option taking account of the feedback we have received. 

We are giving the industry a final opportunity to comment on this issue, to be received by 5pm on 30 September 2013.

The changes in the estimates of the capacity charge resulting from the review conducted as part of our periodic review 2013 (PR13) were very material and, for the reasons set out in our draft determination, we concluded that we would not implement the recalibrated capacity charges as part of PR13 . We would instead either implement an alternative proposal put forward by the Rail Freight Operators' Association (RFOA) (possibly applying it also to open access passenger operators and/or franchise passenger operators, having regard to their views on this), or approve capacity charge rates that have been calculated using the methodology established in control period 4 (CP4), uprated for inflation.

On 17 July, the ORR published a letter expanding on the capacity charge proposal put forward by the RFOA in their letter of 24 April 2013. RDG has also been thinking about these issues, including how the RFOA proposal could be extended to operators other than freight. We are grateful for all the feedback we have received.

RDG has written to us in reply to our draft determination, outlining their proposal for the capacity charge in control period 5 (CP5). Their letter is available along with the other responses we have received.

Consultation letter

Related documents

Responses