Regions return to NR
Network Rail plans restructuring into five regions with Managing Directors and 13 Routes to match passenger franchises.
NETWORK Rail is to radically restructure itself into five regions with Managing Directors and 13 Routes, to better match passenger franchises.
The move follows an extensive review by Chief Executive Andrew Haines into the infrastructure manager’s structures. Its plans are being consulted on with trade unions, and NR says that it will remain within its Control Period 6 (2019-24) funding settlement.
The five regions will be (in alphabetical order) Eastern, London North Western, Scotland, Southern, and Wales and Western.
Each region will have a managing director, with many functions that are currently controlled centrally devolved to them.
These include Infrastructure Projects, Safety Technical and Engineering, Group Digital Railway, and elements of the System Operator function.
Devolution will happen in a series of phases until the end of 2020, but only when the routes and regions are ready to receive them, says NR. It is hoped that criticisms of ‘red tape’ and bureaucracy will be alleviated by the new structure.
The order of regions created is said to depend on who is successful in the process to appoint the new regional managing directors, as all of the current incumbents are ‘displaced’. An internal and external recruitment process is expected to start shortly, and factors such as notice periods and who is appointed where are likely to determine which regions are created first.
The 13 routes (see map) will each have a route director reporting to the Region’s managing director. NR believes that a more granular geographical split will allow the routes to be more responsive and better match train operators’ franchises, which in turn could enable track authority and train operators to work closer together and resolve train performance issues together.
Two of the routes - East Coast (the exact details to be decided) and High Speed 1 - focus on specific railways, rather than geographical areas.
The Route Services Directorate will continue to provide business services that benefit from economies of scale, such as payroll and services that support railway
operations involving resources that are scarce or managed more efficiently at a national level.
A new Network Services Directorate will incorporate freight and national passenger operators, as well as elements of the Group Digital Railway function. It will also provide assurance for national operational performance and co-ordinate national programmes and capability.
Finance, human resources, communications, and legal and property operations will be largely unaffected, but each will develop its own plans on how to integrate with and support the new operating model.
Headcount is expected to be unaffected by the restructuring, with the number of people affected accounting for a single-digit percentage of NR’s workforce.
The company says anyone outside executive level will not be at risk of redundancy “until the first quarter of 2020”.
The consultation with trade unions will take place over the next 12 months. The first phase about forming the regions is expected to be completed by the end of June, with other aspects conducted in following phases.
NR spokesman Kevin Groves told RAIL that the benefits of the devolution completed so far “are already being seen with closer working and better relationships. This deeper devolution looks to bed in and accelerate those benefits, and we should see those come through later this year.”
NR Chief Executive Andrew Haines said: “The need for radical change is clear. Performance is not good enough, and my comprehensive discussions with partners, passengers and politicians up and down the country has made clear to me the things we do well and the areas where we need to improve.
“Devolution has to go much deeper to enable us to get much closer to our partners and customers, and be in a much better place to put passengers first and deliver for business, too. The changes I’m announcing today are designed to do just that.”