Annual Report and Accounts 2011: Future

McNulty review

The Government’s value for money study, chaired by Sir Roy McNulty looks for ways to reduce the railway’s burden on the taxpayer. It concludes that the industry is fragmented and lacking in leadership, and inefficient compared to international benchmarks.  It sets out a roadmap of how the industry can improve and challenges the whole industry to take a leadership role in meeting international benchmarks.

Devolution

Devolution is about the quality of our people and their commercial and leadership skills, and empowering them at route level to take responsibility, accountability and decision making.

Safety on the railway is everyone’s responsibility, with Network Rail and our managers directly accountable. We will not compromise on safety, it remains our number one consideration in everything we do.

Train performance was badly affected by the severe weather during November and December 2010. However better planning and rephasing of work resulted in less disruption of the rail network.

Half way through the five-year Control Period 4 we continue to reduce running costs and remain on target to achieve the challenging efficiency savings that we first set out as part of our CP4 Delivery Plan in 2009.

As we create a new devolved regional structure, we are empowering our people to work more directly with our train and freight operating customers, delivering a seven day railway at the same time as a huge capital upgrade and renewals programme.

We will continue to deliver our commitments under Control Period 4 enabling more trains to run on the network, improving punctuality further and making the railway safer.  At the same time we will find ways of doing business better, faster and at a lower cost to meet the demands of CP5.