Government Response to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme

Government Response to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Great Britain: Department for Transport
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 9780101867825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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

Government Response to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme

Government Response to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Great Britain: Department for Transport
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 9780101867825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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

The Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme

The Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF 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

Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme

Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781785841101
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
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.

Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme

Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Amyas Morse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786040138
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


HC 600 - Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme

HC 600 - Reform of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215091353
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
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.

Rail Franchising Programme

Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Supplement to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme

Supplement to the Brown Review of the Rail Franchising Programme PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780101852722
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 7

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Book Description
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

Lessons from Cancelling the InterCity West Coast Franchise Competition

Lessons from Cancelling the InterCity West Coast Franchise Competition PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102980523
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
The Department for Transport competition to let the Intercity West Coast franchise lacked management oversight and the governance of the project was confused, according to the National Audit Office. The full cost to the taxpayer is unknown but likely to be significant, with at least £1.9 million in staff and adviser costs, £2.7 million in legal costs and £4.3 million on external advisers for the reviews that it has commissioned. The refranchising process was a major endeavour, with considerable complexity and uncertainty. The objectives of the Department for Transport were insufficiently clear during the franchise competition. The Department delayed the issuing of the invitation to tender by eight months because it had not finalized how it would implement recent policy changes. There was also confusion among Department staff about some aspects of the process. The subordinated loan facility was a particular area of confusion. A subordinated loan is capital provided by the parent company which guarantees franchise payments will be made to the Department should the franchisee get less passenger revenue than expected. However, there were significant errors in the tool the Department used to calculate how big a loan it would require bidders to have. The competition lacked strong project management and there was no clear route for the project team to get approval for major issues. No one person oversaw the whole process or could see patterns of emerging problems.

The Privatisation of British Rail

The Privatisation of British Rail PDF 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.

The Department for Transport

The Department for Transport PDF Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102954319
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
This NAO report (HC 1047, session 2007-09), examines rail franchises and the impact they have had on franchises competition; the taxpayer; the passenger and the approach to managing rail franchises in general. Passenger rail services are provided by train operating companies under franchise agreements which generally run 7-10 years. Whilst responsibility for the operation and condition of the track rests with Network Rail, the Department of Transport has ultimate responsibility where it affects passengers and has taken oversight responsibility for passenger rail franchising following the abolition of the Strategic Rail Authority in 2005. The National Audit Office has set out the following recommendations in respect of rail franchises, including: on letting franchises, regional decision making bodies, should have greater involvement; where bids for rail franchises occur, alternative options should be taken into consideration, such as value for money and affordability; that there should be transparency on financial support for franchises with information on how fares cover the overall costs of passenger rail services and the extent of Government support; that there should also be greater transparency on service quality standards; the Government, when negotiating extra passenger capacity, needs to adjust the contract revenue target where appropriate, so that it can better engage in commercial negotiations; also the Department should staff the National Networks Group adequately and not rely unduly on agency staff, given the strategic importance of rail franchising and the potential to reduce direct subsidies.