Network Rail finances: Inflationary pressures outpacing strong delivery of efficiencies

Billions of pounds are spent on operating, maintaining and renewing Great Britain’s mainline railway each year. One of our core functions is to regulate, monitor and report on the financial performance of Network Rail, which has responsibility for managing the mainline railway infrastructure. Passengers, freight users, taxpayers, and the supply chain all have an interest in ensuring Network Rail’s financial performance is strong.

Our annual efficiency and finance assessment (AEFA), and cost benchmarking report, shed light on Network Rail’s financial performance so far in control period seven (CP7). Our analysis shows how, despite above target efficiency performance, a number of factors have led to overall cost increases.

Strong efficiencies performance

Network Rail delivered strong efficiencies in the last year, at £614 million, exceeding its target by 4%. Network Rail also expects to exceed its efficiency targets during the remainder of this control period.

Network Rail’s funding set at the start of the control period accounts for its efficiency targets, meaning it must meet its targets to remain within its funding envelope without having to make savings elsewhere, for instance by cutting renewals. At the same time, this means that exceeding its efficiency target, as Network Rail is doing, reduces the need to cut spending in other areas.

That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important that Network Rail maintains its focus on delivery of efficiencies and why ORR has an official growth goal to ensure Network Rail remains on track to deliver this regulatory target.

Efficiency is only part of the picture

Across net expenditure, Network Rail spent £490 million more for what was delivered than originally planned in the last year. This is significantly, but not exclusively, due to higher-than-expected inflation and input prices.

Our analysis also suggests that over the full five-year control period Network Rail could face around £2.3 billion of additional pressures compared with the inflation and input prices underpinning the periodic review (PR23) that set its current five-year funding. With approximately one quarter of Network Rail’s risk fund remaining (but with three fifths of the control period still to go), the company has significant choices to make about reprioritising expenditure within a more constrained budget.

Therefore, strong efficiency delivery alone will not be enough to offset all the financial pressures facing Network Rail, with the company already revising planned activity due to rising costs. The challenge over the remainder of the control period will be ensuring that short-term affordability pressures do not undermine the long-term condition, reliability and sustainability of the railway.

Faced with rising costs Network Rail has pushed back some renewals work and delivered approximately 12% less renewals activity than originally planned for Year 2 of CP7. This lowers expenditure in the short term but increases reliance on maintenance and is likely to have additional cost implications down the line.

Comparing costs through time and across regions

Our separate cost benchmarking report outlines how cost increases are not a short-term trend. For example, after accounting for inflation, maintenance expenditure has increased by 56% to £2.5 billion over the ten years to 2024-25 and this cannot be explained by changes in network scale, usage and complexity. Factors such as changes in asset management strategies (from reduced renewals to increased maintenance), initiatives to improve track worker safety and vegetation management, and input prices above general inflation may also be contributing to the continued increase in maintenance expenditure. However, controlling for those factors does not explain some of the large variations we see between regions and between maintenance delivery units.

The track ahead

It is important that Network Rail continues its strong progress on efficiencies seen during the start of CP7, because any above target performance here will reduce the need to defer renewals. This will also be true for Great British Railways (GBR) when it takes on responsibility for infrastructure management from Network Rail. Where reducing renewals is unavoidable, it is important that Network Rail (and in future GBR) is able to demonstrate strong evidence for how the company is prioritising asset renewals, to maximise the safety and performance of the railway.