Government Response to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Download

Author: Great Britain: Department for Transport
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 9780101867825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Dated July 2013. The Brown review published as Cm. 8526 (February 2013, ISBN 9780101852623)

Author: Richard Brown
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780101852623
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
The competition held by the Department for Transport to award a new InterCity West Coast franchise in 2012 was intended to be the first in the most extensive programme of franchising since privatisation. Significant errors were made by the Department during the competition, which not only caused the cancellation of that franchise award at considerable public expense but also called into question the remaining franchising programme. This report is the second of two independent reviews commissioned by the Government, by Richard Brown, the Chairman of Eurostar. It concludes that franchising is a fundamentally sound approach for securing the passenger railway services on which so many people rely. His recommendations include: that the franchising programme should be restarted as soon as possible, but at a pace that both the department and the industry can sustain; that franchise terms should be determined by the circumstances and size of each individual franchise; proposals to strengthen and simplify the bidding and evaluation process for each franchise; proposals for the financial and contractual structure of future franchises, including in relation to risk allocation and capital requirements; and that the government should plan to devolve responsibility for further English franchises to the relevant authorities. Mr Brown also makes recommendations on how to strengthen the department's capability to manage the future franchising programme, echoing the findings of Sam Laidlaw's independent inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from the InterCity West Coast competition. The review also recommends that the Government should determine, by February, plans for the three franchise competitions which were put on hold

Author: Great Britain. Parliament
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780101852722
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 7

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Dated January 2013. Supplement to Cm. 8526 (ISBN 9780101852623) fulfilling the Secretary of State's commitment to publish paragraphs 8.13 to 8.20 which were redacted from the original report, along with a corrected Appendix E

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House Of Commons: Committee Of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215091353
Category : Railroad companies
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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The last time we discussed rail franchising was in 2012, in the wake of the collapsed competition for the InterCity West Coast franchise. We are encouraged that, since then, the Department for Transport has strengthened its capability to let franchises, but there are still gaps in its ability to then manage the contracts effectively. The Department's increased focus on the passenger experience is also welcome, but it is unclear when passengers themselves will actually see the benefits. Furthermore, the Department has not yet developed the partnerships with operators that are required to support innovation, improve efficiency and improve services for passengers. Successful rail franchising depends on strong interest from the market and effective competition but there are barriers to entry to the UK market and the possibility that current participants in the market may drop out. Any reduction to the current level of competition is a major risk to securing value for money for the taxpayer. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Department is to manage the complex interdependencies between passenger rail franchises, the infrastructure that train services run on and the introduction of new fleets of trains to the network. Uncertainty about infrastructure work has resulted in delays to franchise competitions and the Department will have to rely on potentially expensive changes to franchises during the life of contracts. The Department's role is to provide a strategic lead for the complex rail system but it has not yet shown that it has embraced this role. It needs to provide a coherent strategic vision and stronger leadership to ensure that the investment decisions it makes now do not result in increased costs in the long term.

Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102983739
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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The Department for Transport has done well so far to contain the infrastructure costs for the Thameslink Programme within the original budget. Phase one of the Programme cost £1.704 billion, was completed on time and was £143 million under budget. However, delays of more than three years in agreeing the contract to buy new trains mean that delivering value for money from the Programme as a whole is at greater risk than the National Audit Office would have expected at this stage. There continues to be a robust transport case for the £3.552 billion (at 2006 prices) Programme. Thameslink services have consistently been among the most crowded London routes with passengers amongst the least satisfied with space on trains; and demand is forecast to increase. The Department estimates that the Programme will make net present benefits of £2.9 billion through reduced journey times, reduced overcrowding on trains and quicker interchanges between services. The Department needs to manage a complex interaction between completing the infrastructure project; buying new trains; and letting a new franchise. Delays to any of these projects can delay significantly or complicate delivery of other parts of the Programme. The award of the estimated £1.6 billion contract to buy new trains is currently delayed by over three years and this has implications for the rest of the programme. And until the contract is let it will not be clear whether delivery of the whole Programme by 2018 is still feasible.

Author: Amyas Morse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786040138
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Transport Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215056962
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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The Transport Committee broadly welcomes the European Commission's 4th Railway Package but believes it focuses too much on liberalising the railway in domestic markets at the expense of important measures to improve cross-border freight and passenger services. The Committee recommends the UK Government should actively negotiate to ensure: joint working between Network Rail and train operators is not prohibited or unduly restricted; metro and light rail systems are not affected by the proposals to separate infrastructure and service operators; the UK's arrangements for letting train franchises are not challenged. In addition, MPs are concerned about: governance arrangements for Eurotunnel; the maximum annual threshold proposed for rail franchises, which could prevent UK companies bidding for work in other EU countries; and the possibility that the EU may become responsible for specifying the content of public transport plans: these should remain the responsibility of national or local governments.

Author: Great Britain: H.M. Treasury
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780101866927
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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In this paper the Government announces an increase in capital spending plans by £3 billion a year, from 2015, which means an additional £18 billion of investment over the next parliament. The Government is taking a long-term approach to infrastructure, to overcome decades of short-term decision making and uncertainty in funding, financing and failures in delivery. Plans include over £70 billion of investment in transport, over £20 billion in schools and £10 billion in science, housing and flood defences. Specific commitments include funding for HS2, the biggest programme of investment in roads since the 1970s, and superfast broadband provision will be expanded so 95 per cent of UK premises will have access to superfast broadband by 2017.Action is being taken to provide the support needed to enable up to £100 billion of private sector energy investment, including through the further roll-out and extension of the UK guarantees scheme. Lessons on successful project delivery will be learnt from the Olympics and similar examples.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Transport Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215053190
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Embarking on an ambitious, perhaps unachievable, reform of rail franchising, in haste, on the UK's most complex piece of railway was irresponsible. Many of the problems with the franchise competition, detailed in the Laidlaw report, reflect very badly on civil servants at the DfT. However, ministers approved a complex - perhaps unworkable - franchising policy at the same time as overseeing major cuts to the Department's resources. This was a recipe for failure which the DfT must learn from urgently. While the Department has already published a response to the Laidlaw report which Mr Laidlaw described as 'very encouraging', and has initiated a review of franchise MPs warn that a number of matters remain to be adequately resolved. The Committee calls on the Secretary of State and the Department for Transport to: explain why ministers and senior officials were misled about how subordinated loan facilities were calculated, if necessary after disciplinary proceedings against staff have concluded; complete a full email capture and get to the bottom of whether or not any officials manipulated the outcome of the competition to ensure First Group were awarded the contracts; provide a comprehensive breakdown of costs arising from the cancellation of the West Coast Mainline franchise competition. The Committee also wants to establish what lessons current and future ministers must learn from this episode

Author: Sean McCartney
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000880966
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The privatisation of the British railway industry was a unique political and economic event. An integrated industry was broken-up into numerous component parts and sold off to private sector interests. The result was a highly fragmented industry that was structurally unsound and operationally dysfunctional. This authoritative volume presents an enlightening portrait of an industry that is less efficient, more costly and still more dependent on state subsidy today than its nationalised predecessor. The nine chapters in this work present a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of how and why the industry has become so dysfunctional and costly, supported by detailed financial analysis and industry examples. Seven chapters comprise a series of peer-reviewed academic papers by Professor McCartney and Dr Stittle and published in leading international journals over the period 2004–2017 which analyse selected key segments of the privatised industry: where appropriate, updates are provided at the end of these chapters outlining developments since initial publication relevant to the analysis therein. Two chapters are published here for the first time: Chapter 7 reviews the performance of the freight sector, while Chapter 1 ‘bookends’ the volume by providing first, an account of how rail privatisation was conceived and implemented in the 1980s/90s, and then reviews the impact of the pandemic and the proposals of the Williams-Shapps White Paper of 2021 which, if enacted, will effectively end the Major government’s experiment. Going far beyond the usual superficial analysis of the topic, this volume will be of significant interest to researchers and advanced students of accounting, economics, business history, transport studies, as well as industry and specialised business interests in transport and privatisation.