Regulator targets a return to previous levels of safety training

A safety priority for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) in the coming year is “ensuring effective change management during reform”.

The regulator also says it “wants to see a fast return to previous levels of safety training, assessment and frontline assurance regimes”. Its health and safety inspectors will “test organisations on these areas” as part of routine inspection work in 2022-23.

This is a key plank of the ORR’s 2022-23 business plan, in which it says it will “continue to provide scrutiny” on the work of both Network Rail and National Highways, on behalf of the public, taxpayers and wider community.”

As rail reform under the WilliamsShapps Plan for Rail starts, ORR will have a wider set of responsibilities.

In early 2023, it expects to take on sponsorship of the Rail Ombudsman. It says this “new and important oversight role for ORR” will provide greater confidence in the Ombudsman’s independence as an arbiter between customers and companies.

Crucial to this, and for the first five years of Great British Railways, is the ORR’s 2023 periodic review (PR23) to determine the regulatory framework and funding for the railway.

While PR23 work increases over the year, ORR “will continue to hold NR to account on its performance and value for money” in the current Control Period (2019-24).

ORR Chief Executive John Larkinson said: “We will continue to work closely with government on rail reform while ensuring we are not distracted from our crucial frontline activities, such as health and safety inspection and enforcement, holding the rail industry to account on its commitments, and providing services to the industry in areas such as access decisions and authorisation of new infrastructure and trains.”