Working Together for the People of Scotland

We welcome the good base that the ORR has in Scotland, and the strong working relationship with Transport Scotland which we wish to maintain and build on. We request that the ORR continues to monitor its resourcing, ensuring that it can continue to provide the required capacity and capability to discharge its functions in Scotland in line with this Guidance.

Section 51(2) of the Railways Act 2005 imposes a duty on the ORR to comply with every reasonable requirement of the Scottish Ministers to provide information, advice or assistance to us in connection with our functions or activities in relation to railways or railway services. We therefore expect the ORR to share information and, critically, provide analysis, as soon as is reasonably practicable about anything that is likely to be material to operational delivery, policy development or to financial planning.

In particular, we expect the ORR to ensure that we receive regular, timely, transparent and reliable reports on Network Rail performance, operational and financial, disaggregated to Scotland route level, to ensure that an accurate understanding of the network is maintained at all times.

In recognising that both Network Rail and the ORR is accountable to the UK Parliament and not the Scottish Parliament, though £4.2 billion of investment in supporting the network is committed over the five years of CP7 by the Scottish Ministers who are accountable to Scottish Parliament, we expect the ORR to support Scottish Government’s scrutiny of Network Rail’s delivery of the HLOS requirements, in addition to conducting its own scrutiny.

In particular we expect the ORR:

• to give evidence to the Scottish Parliament when requested to do so;
• to maintain, via the Chair, a close and transparent relationship with Scottish Ministers;
• to engage with Transport Scotland’s governance arrangements for receiving assurance directly from Scotland’s Railway that outputs specified in HLOS are being delivered in full and within budget;
• to scrutinise detailed transparent information from Network Rail in respect of progress in achieving outputs specified in HLOS and report views on performance and application of regulatory levers as necessary to ensure outputs are delivered.