Media centre

Friday 27 Feb 2015

Transparency update – February 2015

Region & Route:

National

Network Rail has today published new and updated information on its online transparency portal, including spend on procurement, staff salaries breakdown, and a list of suppliers. It has also published a series of infographics detailing the investment during 2013/14 on areas such as track and bridge renewals, telecoms units and level crossings.

Transparency is a key theme within Network Rail’s five-year strategic business plan. Being more open and accessible will make Network Rail more accountable to the travelling public, taxpayers and politicians.

 
Mark Farrow, head of transparency for Network Rail, said: "We're continuing to publish more data as part of our commitment to being more open and transparent. By publishing information in more accessible ways, like infographics, we hope to make it even easier for people to understand what we do, how we do it and why.

“We know that being more transparent will help us become a better, more efficient and responsive organisation, and make us more accountable to the people who use and fund our network. We recognise that there is more to be done and we are committed to making transparency part of everything we do at Network Rail.”

New categories published today are:

• Cost of the network infographics
• Customer satisfaction surveys (views from train and freight operators by route)
• Energy Certificate for the Network Rail office in Milton Keynes
• Health statistics – the cost of short term employee absence
• Incidents of suicide on the rail network
• Safeguarded travel - value paid by Network Rail to Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC)
• Spend on procurement (our procurement spend broken is down by 30 categories which cover our entire expenditure profile)
• Spend over £25k
• A list of our suppliers
• Staff salary breakdown in £20k bands starting from £0

Data that has been refreshed:

• Cable theft report
• Gifts and hospitality
• Group expenses
• Level crossings – a spreadsheet containing details of all crossings, including latest assessments and incidents
• Safety, Health and Environmental Performance report
• Top 10 incidents - the top 10 incidents of delay attributed to Network Rail.
• Members' expenses
• Progress and costs of high profile projects (quarterly progress and status of our major improvement projects)
• Prompt payment performance (total number and percentages of payments made to suppliers by defined time limits)
• Settlement agreements
• Sourcing cycle times
• Station footfall
• Updated and improving quality of open data feeds to include more information on freight services
• Regulatory change - station change threshold figures

 

Notes to editors

Network Rail’s transparency portal is www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/

On 1 September 2014 Network Rail was reclassified as a public body, and by April 2015 will be subject to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. In order to make Network Rail subject the Government brought forward secondary legislation which you can find here. The framework agreement which provides more detail on these changes is available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/network-rail-framework-agreement.

To help the company get ready for the changes, Network Rail’s transparency team have created a FOI implementation programme. This is putting in place the necessary arrangements so Network Rail can comply with the FOI Act and formally manage requests for information from April 2015.