Great Western Coffee Shop

I wish I understood Network Rail better and that I felt they were open and communicative with the end users of the infrastructure, major station and signalling services that they provide. As it is, I don't personally feel that I know if they're doing a good job or not, and I wonder if what little we're told via the TOCs is going to be sugar coated because the TOCs can't afford to fall out with or upset their only option on providing infrastructure.

Criticisms of Network Rail may be justified, or they may not be - but I don't think that the public has enough information on which to judge them, and whilst that's the case there is little data to answer for them in explaining breakdowns and overruns, or in explaining apparently higher costs and longer timescales than some might feel are justified

Network Rail works through and reports to the Department for Transport and the Office of Rail Regulation and is also repsonsible to its "members". See http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/721.aspx .   Recruitment is carried out on an annual basis - see http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/5624.aspx (it's December 2014 now, but that page hasn't been updated for a while and refers you to a process starting in March 2014).   The membership selection panel appears to comprise people who are members of other bodies such as the Audit Commission, the Committee of Standards in Public Life, the Competition Commission, and work at places like the Department for Industry and the Office of Fair Trading.

I'm interested in what Network Rail does and how it works - not only in relation to the TransWilts, or even to the Great Western area necessarily - and I'm not totally convinced that they have the right (or indeed a nearly-right) setup and accountability for their tasks.  They may well have, but the members selection panel doesn't inspire my confidence that they's choosing people to represent the direct and indirect customers, and public members seem conspicuous by their absence in the press and publicity output of Network Rail, or indeed at rail user groups and in forums such as ours.   Indeed, Network Rail have declared redundant the two employees who use to link the organisation to Community Rail, and who have been instrumental in getting little things that made a big difference done.  One wonders if those little things bringing big difference should instead have been supplemented on more major rail routes by doing medium sized things suggested that could make a huge difference.

Bearing this in mind, I submitted an application earlier this year, going through the process, to become a member of Network Rail.   I wasn't surprised to fail to get even beyond the initial application - rejected by an annadine (is that the right word) anodyne email which gave no clue as to who or how the decision had been made.  It might well have been a good decision, but again it's not transparent. What I feel it does do, though, is to allow me to be a little more active in my comments about the organisation, having asked to take a responsible but more knowledgable role with them, as a user of train services and someone who'se learned a little about what the consumer wants over the years.

I believe that it would be wise for Network Rail to have representation of service users at the governance and decision level - if only to provide gentle inputs - wind into their sails to help inform decisions, and to pass back some of the why and wherefore. I'm not suggesting that the lunatics take over the asylem, but if us lunatics were a bit better informed as to why things are as they are, we might just be better able to accept some of the decisions made, and indeed to inform our own constituency of members as to what's going on so that we can change our travel plans / habits at appropriate times, and manage our expectations, to the mutual benefit of all of us.

A challenge, as this is a public post.   If you are a public member of Network Rail, or a member of the board or the member selection panel, please answer some of my concerns.   Please follow up some of the posts where Network Rail is being talked about in an unknowing way to help us gain knowledge. And please help us ease things forward so that your user community is truely represented in your govrnance, or at least privvy to why things are as they are.   Thanking you in anticipation.

"Anodyne" is what you're looking for.  :)

Thank you - I have corrected the original post to reflect that.  And I note that in following on my message (and by your like, thank you) I'm not a lone voice on this matter.

I will add that having looked through the full list of members, one of their names (Lord Tony Berkeley) is familiar, as he's attended a couple of the rail events I've been to as a guest speaker.   Fascinating to listen too, and knows his stuff; he's the nearest that any of them seems to come to the user community, but, alas, it's not really "near".  It needs others there to be truly near.

NR's argument is that their end users are the TOCs, while we are the end users of the TOCs. I think that is why NR won't directly answer to the commuting public.

Pressure required on Government to change this

I can see that argument.  However, I cannot see any TOC representatives either amongst the public members of Network Rail.  And as a monopoly supplier to the TOCs, Network Rail could have a very big stick to keep the passenger service operators in line - it must be tempering for them to say "if you don't play ball with us, we won't play ball with you".  Of course, we don't know that they act like that - but neither do we know that they don't. 

With the change in status of Network Rail in September 2014 from a "Not for dividend Company" to a "Government Agency" the composition of the Network Rail Board will be / is in the process of changing.  The Board will have TOC's and FOC's members, likely to come from ATOC etc also the DfT will have a presence, there will still be "public members" who are likely to be drawn from people with specific business, industry or academic skill and or knowledge, it is very unlikely public members will be drawn from "pressure" and or user groups.

Understood.

But why no such representation from the user community anywhere in the organisation?  :)

The User Community for NR are theTOCs.

The public might traverse their assets, but do not pay directly for this. The taxpayer is represented

Well, I went and looked at the biogs of the members.

Words fail me.

The biggest problem is that there's too many of them. A board of that size can't hold its officers to account. It's a recipe for non-governance.

Completely agree with that sentiment!

We never seem to learn the lessons from history.

1825 and the opening of the Stockton and Darlington when there was open access and anyone could run atrain. They soon realised that that railways are naturally an integrated system and separating the management of the wheel rail interface should be under one "Fat Controller".

And whoever is responsible for any shortcomings in the train service, Network Rail or others,  it leaves the TOCs to take the flak from affected passengers.

And don't we all just love the public services sector with its multi layered out sourced contracts that are further out sourced by the contractors who intern out source and sub contract all of which employ vital personnel on zero hour contracts; but this does mean a competitive market which keeps costs down, improves efficacy and reliability ...................

or did I miss read the reasons why British Rail was fragmented into over 100 companies