Regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has penned a scathing letter calling out “systemic issues” within Network Rail’s compliance with asset examination requirements and has committed to launching an investigation into these failures.

A letter from Her Majesty’s chief inspector of railways Richard Hines and ORR planning and performance director Feras Alshaker to Network Rail said the regulator will be commissioning an independent investigation into Network Rail’s legal obligations and responsibilities of safety where the management of its structures is concerned.

ORR believes Network Rail has been “noncompliant” in a number of areas where the safe management of its assets is concerned. These areas cover the regularity and efficiency of its structural assessments, knowledge of the capacities of some its structures and the many missing risk assessments.

The ORR says Network Rail does not even know the structural capacity of some its assets.

Network Rail’s backlog of structure inspections was first highlighted in 2021 and has been growing since then.

The regulator has called Network Rail out for its “historical” non-compliance of standards related to asset management, which ORR believes has rendered Network Rail unfit to ensure the safety of the railway.

Alshaker’s letter says: “Taking into account the duration and scale of non-compliance, we are concerned that Network Rail is unable to effectively fulfil its legal obligations and responsibilities for the asset management and safety of its structures and operational property.”

It continues: “In summary, we are not satisfied with the progress being made. We are particularly concerned that the resultant safety, performance, and asset stewardship impacts are not being accurately assessed or mitigated.”

After previous dialogue between Network Rail and ORR regarding the situation, ORR now believes Network is not doing enough to remedy its lack of compliance.

ORR will now launch its investigation, which concerns Network Rail’s high level recovery proposals to mitigate its noncompliance.

However, according to Alshaker’s letter: “These proposals lack sufficient detail to give confidence that they will be delivered, and recovery periods are unacceptably long. In some locations you have not defined dates by which compliance with your own standards will be achieved.

“This is unacceptable.”

“A lack of up-to-date structural assessments means that you lack essential information about your assets.

“This could affect your ability to make appropriate decisions about the management of your infrastructure.

“This could lead to unaddressed risks to train performance and public safety. Additionally, the failure to conduct risk assessments for all assets that are non-compliant with your own standards means that you cannot demonstrate that any resultant safety risks are being identified and managed.”

Network Rail safety and engineering director Martin Frobisher said: “We have a comprehensive plan in place for the delivery of our structures inspections and assessments.

“Progress has been made but there is still much more to do and we are working closely with the ORR and our regional engineers to prioritise this activity and move forward with our plans.”

Timeline

In May 2023, ORR called upon Network Rail to remedy delays in examining the condition of its railway structures including bridges, tunnels and culverts, many dating back to the Victorian era.

The ORR, which is the independent safety and economic regulator for Britain’s railways and monitor of National Highways, wrote to the rail operator expressing its concerns, after Network Rail’s backlog of structure examinations was first highlighted by ORR in 2021.

The backlog of inspections had been growing. In summer 2023, ORR told to NCE it was “not happy” as it had been asking for improvement for two years.

A NCE data investigation of the situation followed in July 2023, which revealed more than 500 structures on the railway network had not been examined by Network Rail in over five years.

At the time, NCE revealed of the 19,985 structures that were due for examination, over 4,000 did not have a planned inspection date.

In July 2024, ORR then reported mixed progress on the backlog at the end of Control Period 6. While regions such as Eastern were on track with their recovery trajectories, others, such as North-West & Central and Southern, did not show significant improvement.

At this stage, ORR extended its enhanced monitoring for six months to monitor examination recovery plans.

In September 2024, ORR then found out, in addition to ongoing examination noncompliance, Network Rail lacked up-to-date structural assessments, and in some cases had no recorded structural capacity, for some of its structural assets, including both structures buildings.

Addressing the situation, Network Rail then undertook work to provide structural assessment recovery plans.

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