Finally losing patience, the Government stepped into direct control of what was now seen as effectively an arm of the DfT, and dramatically ‘paused’ the Midland Main Line electrification. NR’s humiliation reached new levels.
Confusion reigned. While Government spokesmen and ministers relentlessly used the ‘paused’ argument, no one actually believed it, and exasperated contractors were confidentially briefed in presentations by very senior NR managers where it was made clear that “the MML scheme isn’t paused - it’s dead”.
Supply chain chaos
This was the supply chain chaos and reputational meltdown into which the pugnacious but capable Hendy was parachuted by government. At the same time, career railwayman and non-executive member of the DfT Richard Brown was put on the NR Board as the DfT’s representative.
The implication was that the Government had taken advice from around the industry that the best course was not to ‘go for the headline’ by an enforced breaking-up or reorganising of NR, but to instead boost the railway brainpower at the top of NR, which was starting to look stretched and a tad threadbare. The subsequent appointment of career railwayman Rob Brighouse as a non-executive director, once he retires as Managing Director of Chiltern Railways at the end of 2015, is further evidence of this very welcome measured and nuanced approach by the Secretary of State.
Not surprisingly, my immediate bid for an interview was declined by Hendy, but not without a sparkle. “Let me get my feet under the table - and I promise I’ll talk to you,” he said. “Blimey, full marks for trying, but I haven’t actually left TfL yet!”
Then the three reviews were announced - Hendy’s own look at what might be termed Christmas present, an internal review of NR Christmases past by Dame Colette Bowe, and then the especially important report into Christmases yet to come, commissioned by the SoS from High Speed 1 Chief Executive Nicola Shaw.
Framed as a report into NR financing and structure for the future, it was obvious from the start (and confirmed by Shaw in her own scoping study, published on November 12) that she would be looking at the railway in its widest sense - including (especially) the role of regulation. Without doing so, Shaw pointed out entirely reasonably and accurately, the job would not be properly done.
The stage was therefore set for the latest surge of structural evolution affecting our infrastructure. Then, with all three reviews yet to be published, Network Rail Chief Executive Mark Carne suddenly announced a major internal shift whereby the devolution lever was being pulled yet harder.
The IP organisation that had dropped the ball so badly last Christmas at King’s Cross was having its wings clipped - Carne had told me personally on the day of Hendy’s appointment that in future IP would serve as contractor to the Route Managing Directors, rather than calling the tune on infrastructure work, as in the past. Carne’s reorganisation of November 2015 made that real, placing much more power and control in the hands of the RMDs, who will henceforth lead the charge. NR’s ‘centre’ of 6,000 or so people will shrink to less than 2,000 as RMDs take greater control and the centre does only what it is genuinely best placed to do - and which the RMDs want it to do.
I did wonder whether Carne had ‘jumped the gun’ on the outcome of the three reviews, and might pay a price - but it quickly became apparent that the ‘three reviewers’ are not only in close touch but are harmonising and dovetailing their work. That isn’t to say they are working to a pre-ordained conclusion (they clearly are not), merely that they are not working in silos and that a coherent, outcome is being sought. Nicola Shaw’s scoping study for her review actually included the changes Carne had announced shortly before. I think ‘joined-up’ is the word.
This was the context in which the call finally came from Network Rail HQ. Hendy was keeping the promise he made last summer - the first exclusive interview with the new NR chairman was in the diary. Happy days.
We met at Hendy’s modest corner office several floors up in the Podium on Eversholt Street, at Euston. It is festooned with personal memorabilia. A superb framed Underground ‘target’, with Hendy’s name where the station name would be, as a parting gift from TfL. Framed pictures of Hendy’s two vintage double-deck London buses. A network route map with some interesting anomalies, which Hendy points out with a wry smile - according to NR’s cartographer, the Okehampton-Tavistock line is already there on the ground! Odd how no one noticed before…
“I was in a fairly heavy meeting a few days ago, and was idly looking at the map and my eye settled on that,” says Hendy. Given that this was the organisation that published a map last Christmas showing lines affected by the King’s Cross meltdown, and showing the Alexandra Palace branch still in use (closed to passengers July 5 1954), it’s good to know that the new chairman has such detailed railway knowledge. Managers down the food chain would be well advised to remember that.
Hendy has agreed to meet to respond to ‘The Rail Manifesto’ last issue of RailReview. It was a thumping, detailed read of considerable complexity. Has he actually read it himself - or merely been briefed on it?
“I did read it actually. I thought there were a lot of interesting points, but the truth is that what you said at the beginning is right - the rail industry is moving on so rapidly that setting out your stall on position is difficult.
“Since you’ve published that ‘Manifesto’ issue, we’ve already had two reports - mine and Colette Bowe’s. We’ve had the National Infrastructure Commission set up. We now have John Cridland as chairman of Transport for the North. So I think it’s moving quite quickly. It might be better just to talk about this place and what I’m doing, and then if you want to fill out of that some answers to things that people raised in the Manifesto, then we could do that?”
That sounds like a plan. Hendy’s always a good talker, so giving him free rein at first and then coming back to any outstanding points will work well. And we’re off…
Hendy starts by restating a point frequently made by Secretaries of State for Transport - that a once declining, under-invested industry is now a “huge growth industry” getting bigger by around 5% a year. Far from becoming less important, rail is now of central, fundamental importance socially and economically.
“And that’s why things are moving fast - because the politics of it demand that things are happening. It’s not hard to agree with most of the sentiments that are expressed in some of those Manifesto issue views, but it all has to be in the context of what policies the Governments are following - what the latest decisions to be taken actually are and what should happen.”
Hendy immediately links his thinking to the coming Shaw report: “Nicola has set out three things as key issues for her report… three things: growth, passengers and devolution. They all seem to me to be really good issues, because the railway needs to face up to all of those things. And the answers to them are quite complex and quite difficult, and intertwine with politics.”
I want to probe just how ‘joined-up’ the Hendy, Bowe and Shaw reports really are, as indicated by Carne’s early move accelerating NR devolution. How much co-ordination is there? Is it all pre-ordained? Or will the three reports appear like the suddenly stopping reels of the traditional fruit machine? Are we heading for three cherries and a payout? Or the disappointing clunk of a ‘no-win’?
“Well, no,” he says with a knowing smile. “I think it’s more thoughtful than that. I talked to Colette during preparation of her review. There’s a logical sequence. Her review has been in order to identify things that could have gone better about the past, in terms of planning big enhancements. My review is about the consequences of where we are with the money and the delivery of enhancements for 2019. And Nicola’s is about more than the future of NR, it’s about the future of the railway.
