ORR: Network Rail Improves Efficiency, but Must Keep Renewals High

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has published its annual assessment of Network Rail, finding ‘real progress on efficiency’ and fewer train cancellations – but stresses that infrastructure manager needs to provide ‘further evidence’ of how its revising its plans to protect the safety and condition of Britain’s ageing railway.

This revelation comes as inflationary pressures have begun driving a cut in renewals to 83% of the original plan across both England and Wales.

The ORR has stated that whilst fewer passenger and freight train services were cancelled in the year to March 2026, work to renew the railway has reduced. Network-wide, passenger train cancellations reduced to 3.5% from 4.1% in the previous year, with freight cancellations sitting 0.5% lower (an improvement) and meeting the end-of-year target.

Reliability improvements have been driven by a reduction in traincrew cancellations, but Network Rail has played an ‘important role’ in minimising cancellations related to whole system reliability, including through the management of rail infrastructure.

Train punctuality across the board remained stable, with 84.1% of services arriving within three minutes of their scheduled arrival time between April 2025 and March 2026.

The ORR has stated that targeted interventions have contributed to this improved service performance, with the regulator having formally closed out its period of enhanced monitoring following its investigation into Network Rail’s Wales & Western region earlier this year. It also challenged Network Rail’s delivery of train performance in its Eastern region, with the region responding by delivering an improvement plan which is now starting to show signs of impact.

According to the assessment, Network Rail has also been found to have exceeded its efficiency target for the second year running. The company delivered 614 million GBP of efficiencies over the last year, and is now forecasting to deliver 4.1 billion GBP of efficiencies over control period 7 (which runs from April 2024 to March 2029), above its 3.9 billion GBP target.

However, despite this, financial pressures have led the company to reduce the number of assets – such as track, tunnels and bridges – that it intends to renew.

In Scotland, the ORR has stated that Network Rail is broadly delivering its CP7 plan and has not had to reduce renewals to mitigate inflationary pressures. The company has been found to have made good progress on cancellations, which fell to 2.1% – 0.2% lower than its 2.3% target.

Despite this, however, at the end of year two of CP7, the Scotland Train Performance Measure was 89.8%. Network Rail Scotland and ScotRail are working towards achieving 92.5% on this measure by year four of CP7, but ORR considers this to be at risk.

Graham Richards, Director, Planning and Performance, said:

Fewer cancellations is good news for passengers and freight customers. And £614m of efficiencies this year is good news for taxpayers. But we know there is still much more to be done through Network Rail working ever more closely with train operators to deliver better whole-industry outcomes.

If we’re to continue to protect and improve future train performance, we must carefully manage our ageing railway infrastructure.

We recognise that in a constrained funding environment there are no easy answers, which is why we have challenged Network Rail to provide better evidence of how it will mitigate the effects of declining asset condition on train safety and performance outcomes.