Read the peer reviews for this feature
“At this stage, I’ll probably be giving you the questions rather than the answers,” says Rob Brighouse as we sit down to conduct his first media interview since his appointment in December to chair the Department for Transport’s Shadow East West Rail Company.
But after an initial nervous pause, he is quick to qualify this inauspicious opening gambit with a reassuring smile, and then provide ample evidence that he is already hard at work executing his demanding new brief.
His task is twofold: to breathe new life into the ponderous construction of the proposed 75-mile East West route between Oxford and Cambridge, while spearheading Government plans to throw train operations and infrastructure management firmly back together.
East West Rail (EWR) will design, build and then operate the line - as an independent, vertically integrated organisation hitherto unseen on the rail network in the post-British Rail era.
It therefore marks an abrupt departure from the monopoly enjoyed first by Railtrack and then inherited by Network Rail, after it took track authority back into public ownership in 2002, while also representing a large extension of the control currently granted to franchised operators.
Yet despite this key structural change, Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling has already made it clear that EWR will not herald the beginning of the wholesale break-up of NR. Nor does he seek to abandon the central tenets of the privatisation settlement devised by John Major’s Government more than two decades ago.
Instead, EWR is intended to help remedy the perceived shortcomings of a track operator mired by reputational damage (caused by soaring costs and project overruns such as the much criticised electrification of the Great Western Main Line), and to make NR behave more like the private company it seeks to emulate.
It is intended to quicken the pace of progress being made to induce the change necessary to transform NR into a more customer-orientated and financially disciplined organisation.
Devolution, cost cutting and the introduction of private finance has long been the agreed formula to achieving these aims, yet Grayling would like to see greater momentum being registered along this pathway, it having been recommended first by Sir Roy McNulty’s report in 2011, and then by Nicola Shaw’s five years later.
Deep alliancing between NR and contractors has been tried and tested to deliver individual enhancements, while integrated operating teams are set to be introduced to the new East Midlands and Southeastern franchises starting their procurement this year (to be awarded and commence in late 2018). But Grayling will hope to have found his winning hand in EWR, by setting a benchmark for NR to follow in the efficient construction and operation of infrastructure, and by entrusting all aspects of its delivery to the private sector.
Brighouse will now closely examine how this will work in practice, before announcing the next steps for creating a fully-fledged EWR at the end of March.
“My first few weeks has been to assemble a really good team, and to decide all the questions and people we need to talk to,” he says.
“The first three months is then to do a detailed analysis and answer the three fundamental questions put to me by the Secretary of State , which are: What is the scope to reduce cost? What is the scope to accelerate the programme? And, very importantly, how can we lever in private finance and to what extent can that bring vertical integration?
“They’re all questions, not answers. So at the end of the three-month period, I’m hoping I’ll have at least more clarity on those three questions, and can then decide how we can take the project forward.”
Unsurprisingly, details remain scarce on the finer points of a delivery model that has no precedent in the 21st century. Nevertheless, there are some obvious operational questions for Brighouse, including how EWR will interface with NR where the routes physically connect but will be under separate jurisdictions.
I also ask what the new timeline might be for delivery of the line’s disused western section between Oxford and Bedford (originally slated for completion in Control Period 5, 2014-2019), and if he can tell me whether a final route has been decided for the missing central section between Bedford and Cambridge. Will EWR have its own procurement system and directly tender and manage its supply chain? How will investors achieve a financial return?
Brighouse once again points to the three-month scoping study he has been commissioned to produce. He is an experienced handler of the media, so there is little point in trying to second guess what conclusions he’ll make, or trying to tease out anything else before he’s ready to formally share his findings.
“It’s a study from which I’ll make my recommendations,” he continues. “You can try, but you won’t put words in my mouth. I need to have an open mind, and at the end of March I’ll come up with my thoughts and recommendations on what is the most effective delivery mechanism for this.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but the key is what I’ll say in March. So you should talk to me again and ask those sorts of questions then.”
