26.06.15
McLoughlin announcements: new news?
Much of the national media jumped on the transport secretary’s bandwagon yesterday pointing the finger and criticising the poor performance of Network Rail in CP5 as a number of planned modernisation projects, such as Midland Main Line and Transpennine electrification, have been delayed or cut back. Some even reported that Network Rail’s £38bn “improvement project” had collapsed. Yes, there were a few sighs here at RTM as the national media endeavoured to misunderstand everything about the way Network Rail is funded.
Although Patrick McLoughlin finally dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s yesterday, the rumblings – as we had previously reported – started long before then.
In fact, Network Rail as part of its ‘transparency agenda’ has finally published board meeting papers from March this year, which showed that the company was reviewing its business plan.
Those papers noted that decisions on enhancement deferrals from June had to be made jointly with the DfT. I think we saw the result yesterday.
The minutes also showed the “routes numbers in respect of renewals activity do not fully match those agreed in the Final Determination. Patrick Butcher, Phil Hufton and Francis Paonessa were working to bring these numbers back into line with the Final Determination over the course of CP5”.
The board added that further work would be undertaken over the next few months to identify the best course of action, whether this was “demonstrating that fewer renewals were in fact needed or identifying additional improvements”.
At the time, Patrick Butcher made the point that as well as detailed modelling being required on a line by line basis, the global message that the overall system is now overstretched and may struggle to accommodate any shocks needed to be brought out more strongly in the narrative.
Following the detailed discussion on the business plan, the board agreed to a review of the sustainability of maintenance and renewal volumes. This review has presumable already been done, as it was required to inform the talks with the DfT about postponing some enhancement works.
(Image: c. PA Images)
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