As plans are drawn up for Transport for the North and Rail North to integrate once TfN gets statutory status next year, we caught up with David Hoggarth, Rail North Director, to find out more about Transport for the North’s sister organisation.
We started off by asking David how he originally got involved with Rail North:
“I worked at West Yorkshire Combined Authority for about fifteen years,” he told us, “I was involved in rail my whole time at West Yorkshire and I was one of the people who did a lot of the early work on the proposal for rail devolution. At the time it was the first plan for transport devolution in England, although obviously now TfN is taking that forward across a range of areas. So really it was that involvement, going back at least three years, which spurred me on to apply for the Rail North position when it became available. It’s great to be able to be part of something new and exciting with clear benefits for the people in the North.”
“Rail North has formally existed for two years – it was formed in September 2014 as a limited company. But, in terms of work on the concept and collaboration, the genesis was probably a couple of years before that. In its current form, with an office and a staff team, it really started in November 2015.”
We asked how Rail North relates to Transport for the North:
“There’s a strong working relationship between the 2 organisations and clearly some overlap between Rail North and TfN,” David explains, “But Rail North is really where it started in terms of devolution and it predates the discussions around TfN.”
“We’re related in terms of membership, because obviously devolution is about local areas having ownership and that’s how Rail North has been created. Rail North is owned by its twenty-five member authorities.
“Many of those are the same authorities that are in the TfN partnership. The geography varies as TfN is the North of England whereas Rail North covers the geography of the rail franchises, so we have representatives from the East Midlands as well as Stoke and Staffordshire, because it needs to be inclusive of all the areas which are covered by the Northern and TransPennine Express franchises. But really, when you’re talking about local authorities, both elected officials and senior officers, being represented there is a core of the same people involved in both Rail North and Transport for the North, so it makes sense to integrate. At the moment we’re two separate organisations but the plan is to become one next year when TfN gains statutory status as a sub-national transport body.”
David explained exactly what Rail North does at the moment:
“Put simply, Rail North is about improving rail services in the north of England. In 2014 we published a long-term rail strategy. That covers rail all across the North of England, it covers all passenger franchises and freight for the next twenty years. It’s the first time we’ve had a comprehensive strategy for rail owned by the Northern authorities. That was our starting point.”
“The very specific proposal from government was to devolve management of the rail franchises, which is TransPennine and Northern, and essentially that’s our core business: the management and specifications of those franchises. That’s done through a partnership agreement with DfT because DfT procured the franchises and they are taking the risk on them. But it’s a partnership that puts the management of the franchises firmly in the North. It’s managed by Rail North staff but it’s overseen by a board that is jointly Rail North and DfT.”
“As well as the two franchises we co-manage, we also seek to influence what other franchises that serve parts of the North look like in our region, although we don’t have the same management role in those franchises. The long term rail strategy covers all franchises so we are interested in and are using our influence on those franchises. We’ve recently responded to the Wales and Borders and the West Coast Mainline franchise consultations. Part of devolution is seeking to bring the influence of the North with one voice – so for example with the West Coast Mainline consultation, we have responded on behalf of the North as a whole and hopefully that supports and adds weight to individual authorities’ responses.”
“Within the partnership agreement we also have the ability to take on more of a role on investment and infrastructure on rail. The partnership agreement specifically supports us gaining devolved responsibility for schemes that are within the Network Rail investment programme in the North. The first one of those is the TransPennine route upgrade which is line electrification and journey time improvements for the route across the Pennines from York to Manchester.”
“Similar to the franchise arrangement, we’ll be doing this jointly with DfT. We’ll have a team responsible for the work, answerable to a joint board from DfT and Rail North who will be acting as client for Network Rail. The advantage is that Network Rail, or the Train Operating Companies in the case of the franchises, see one person acting as client but behind the scenes there’s a partnership. The ambition is that over time DfT’s role will fall away and these will be managed solely by the North, through TfN.”
We asked David about plans for the future, particularly about more detail on plans for Rail North and Transport for the North to integrate:
“Both Rail North Ltd and the TfN Partnership Board have agreed a process of integrating and the principles around that,” David told us, “The current members of Rail North will all have the same influence and voting rights that they have now on rail matters. This is particularly important for places like the East Midlands which are not part of TfN. They will get associate membership so they will be able to vote on Rail North matters. “Aside from that, we’ve got two fantastic, transformational franchises which we’ve really helped to shape and influence, particularly in terms of the amount of investment that’s been promised: 500 extra carriages, 2000 extra services per week, many more services on Sundays, these are transformational uplifts over the next few years. We want to make that work really well by managing it properly and holding the train companies to account, making sure they deliver what they’ve said they will, improvements in performance and passenger benefits.”
“But we also want to get even more out of this and that’s where infrastructure investment comes in: for example, many of the new trains are capable of 125 miles per hour. Much of the track they currently run on is suitable for 90mph at the most, but if we can improve the line speed we can get more out of the rolling stock and we can make savings in how that’s delivered. One of the benefits of the Rail North devolution agreement is that we get to keep those savings to reinvest in further improvements for passengers, so we want to go even further than is set out in the franchises.”
“We are also already starting work on the next round of franchises. The current franchises run to 2023-25 and our ambition is to have full devolution at that point and for the North to be solely responsible for specifying those new franchises. So we’re looking at what rail transport will look like at that point: we’ll have an upgraded TransPennine route, what services do we want to buy to use that infrastructure to its best advantage?”
“The North has a massive opportunity to do things differently and better and we’re really lucky to have a lot of investment happening and I think the North can really capture that, utilise what’s already committed and get even more out of it and get people really excited about what’s happening, to deliver the right outcomes. I don’t think we’ve ever been in this position before, previously we’ve been running down to government and seeking one-off grants and funds, whereas now we can start planning ahead and putting the North in the driving seat.”
Finally, we asked David what he thought the best thing about living and working in the North was:
“For me it’s the mix across the region,” he enthused, “Both the great cities and the great countryside. Certainly this job, because it covers the whole of the North, has got me out to many places that I hadn’t been to before and I still have many more to discover!”