ORR accepts NR Wales and Western Region's Improvement Plan

The Office of Road and Rail (ORR) has approved Network Rail’s plan to improve train performance across the Wales and Western England region.

The plan follows on from the regulator’s investigation into the region’s post-pandemic performance which has steadily been declining. It found that the region had had subsequently breached its Network Licence and ordered that Network Rail create a “robust plan” plan or possibly face a fine of up to £3m.

Since that time and days after the investigation was launched, its regional director, Michelle Handforth stood down with Rob Cairns succeeding her in November 2023.

The investigation report found at the time that the region (which includes the main line into Paddington) had not prepared adequately for the introduction of the Elizabeth Line as well as having an inadequate management structure in place to cope with infrastructure problems.

The plan which Wales and Western has dubbed ‘Project Brunel’ and will cost nearly £140 million outlines over 50 steps. The steps broadly focus on improving resilience, signalling and incident response across the Thames Valley area currently. However, the region insists it will be implementing improvements across the region, with all of the steps completed by 2029.

Rob Cairns, Regional Managing Director for Network Rail Wales and Western, said: "We are already underway with delivering our far-reaching performance improvement plan.

"We will not rest until we consistently deliver train performance at the levels that passengers rightly expect."

ORR noted that Network Rail has already made progress in improving train performance in the region, with overall train performance improving on average for around five months.

Feras Alshaker, Director, Performance and Planning at ORR, said: We are pleased with the detailed work Network Rail has done to create a clear, workable plan that should sort out the underlying issues and deliver sustained improvement for passengers - passenger train performance in the Wales & Western region has been letting customers down for too long.

We pushed for this plan to be comprehensive and region-wide, and it is. We will be watching to make sure Network Rail delivers on its promises to passengers."