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 25 June 2025 we wrote a letter to Network Rail to provide an overview of our approach and to outline initial opportunities. Our 17 December 2025 update letter sets out our progress to date on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our engagement with Network Rail.
• In May 2025 we consulted HS1 stakeholders on our Holding to Account of London St Pancras Highspeed. We confirmed that we would seek to reduce regulatory burden through streamlined governance and reporting, which we had set out in our recent Periodic Review (PR24).  

Regulator pledges measures which have a tangible effect on driving growth and investment

• We are conducting 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 is designed to ensure that the rail network investment framework continues to encourage private investment in rail and contributes to wider economic growth.