Reform of regulators and regulation

In March 2025 HM Treasury (HMT) published New approach to regulators and regulations supporting growth.

​This document sets out the Government’s next steps on regulation and regulators and seeks to enable a regulatory system that supports innovation and economic growth while ensuring accountability for the quality of regulations introduced, as well as the way in which independent regulators implement and enforce them. 

​We are responding to this publication with the workstreams below. 

​​Reducing bureaucracy for businesses and cutting administrative costs for business by 25% by the end of the Parliament

• ​A review of our current rail industry-facing service standards (and KPIs) leading to 15 new commitments to improve our service standards. We published our report on 26 September 2025.  
• ​We are working with Network Rail, National Highways and London St Pancras Highspeed, that we regulate and monitor, to identify and implement opportunities to increase the effectiveness and efficiency in how we work and engage. This includes looking for ways that we can reduce the administrative burden where we can whilst ensuring we can continue to fulfil our statutory duties.
• In July 2025 we developed a programme of work to consider how we could reduce any administrative burden from our monitoring and regulation of National Highways as part of our preparations for the third road period (RP3, April 2026 to March 2031). We will provide a public update on our progress when we publish our holding to account policy for RP3.
• On 16 July 2026 we wrote our final update letter to Network Rail, describing project activities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our engagement with the company and a transition into regular business. Previous letters on 25 June and 17 December 2025 set out our planned approach, then updated on progress respectively.
• In the most recent Periodic Review (PR24), we consulted HS1 stakeholders on opportunities to reduce regulatory burden and committed to adopting a more progressive approach to governance and reporting. During the first year of the control period, ORR attended LSPH's established governance forums, including those covering renewals planning and research and development, to gather evidence and provide ongoing scrutiny throughout the year. This enabled us to make greater use of information already produced by LSPH and significantly reduced the additional data requests and meetings required to inform our Annual Report.

Measures which have a tangible effect on driving growth and investment

• On 29 May 2026 we published our AI Action Plan, which sets out the practical steps we are taking to enable safe AI powered innovation. The plan focuses on providing clearer guidance, ensuring our regulatory processes remain compatible with AI-enabled products and services, improving access to data where appropriate, and exploring innovative approaches such as regulatory sandboxes. Through this work, we aim to reduce unnecessary barriers to innovation while maintaining high standards of safety, assurance and accountability.
• On 22 May 2026 the Secretary of State for Transport wrote to us outlining two ORR specific Growth Goals. These clarify how we will support economic growth through our regulatory role — by driving efficiency, enabling investment, and supporting rail reform. The goals also establish a transparent framework for monitoring and reporting progress, ensuring accountability to government, industry and the public.
• Rolling stock maintenance market review: on 29 April 2026 we launched a review into the passenger rolling stock maintenance market. This review supports ORR’s wider objective of securing value for money and ensuring that market arrangements support efficient investment and growth in the rail sector. Our review will focus on the structure of long-term maintenance arrangements, the transparency of maintenance costs and charges, and the extent to which maintenance arrangements are open to competition at renewal. It will also broadly consider the potential remedies available to address any market issues if required. Further information on the review is available.
• House of Lords Committee on Industry and Regulators – inquiry into regulators and growth: on 19 December 2025 Baroness Taylor of Bolton, Chair of the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee, wrote to ORR asking for us to contribute to an inquiry on regulators and growth. Our 16 January 2026 response letter is available.

Rail Network Investment Framework Deep Dive 

• We have conducted a deep dive into the rail network investment framework with the rail supply chain to encourage direct investment into railway infrastructure. On 26 June 2025 we wrote a letter to HMT to provide an overview of our findings and recommendations from phase 1.
• On 20 October 2025 we wrote a follow up letter to HMT to provide an update on work undertaken in phase 2 as well as setting out our approach for phase 3. The next stage of our review was designed to ensure that the rail network investment framework continues to encourage private investment in rail and contributes to wider economic growth.
• On 21 April 2026 we wrote a letter to HMT to outline our findings from phase 3. We found that the framework used to support private investment in rail is generally working, but some elements, particularly risk-related fees, may be higher than necessary and could be simplified to make investment easier. We continued with a programme of targeted engagement across industry and government to deliver the necessary improvements to the risk fee funds in Autumn 2026.
• On 30 September 2026, we wrote to Network Rail instructing it to reduce a number of RNIF fee rates to bring them closer to break-even and provide better value for third-party investors. Network Rail has accepted our position and will implement the changes from 1 November 2026, following aligned publication of the changes by ORR and Network Rail at the end of October.