The National Audit Office says the speed of planned rail reforms left the Department for Transport with too little time to plan, build agreement and deliver, with no contingencies if events did not go as expected. It adds that the Department is ‘not yet set up to secure value for money from its work to reform rail’.
In its Rail reform: the rail transformation report, published on 8 March, the NAO says the Government’s rail transformation plans are facing delays, while longstanding issues in the sector such as financial sustainability and service to passengers still need to be addressed.
Public Accounts Committee Chair Meg Hillier said the rail network is ‘in desperate need of reform’ but DfT set up the rail transformation programme ‘to a high-risk timetable but without a clear plan and has yet again failed to deliver’. Ms Hillier said DfT must now ‘be realistic about what it can achieve and how quickly it can do that and deliver a workable plan in the next Parliament which stops passengers being only an afterthought’.
The report says performance of passenger operators is not good enough and the £3.1 bil…
