Stakeholder engagement

Network Rail should be engaging with its stakeholders in a way that improves delivery for passengers and freight, and enhances value for money.

Annual assessment

Our annual assessment for the first year of CP7 is presented in a letter to Network Rail. It provides a high level overview of Network Rail’s stakeholder engagement between April 2024 and March 2025, including early progress made under the new CP7 approach.

The assessment highlights the steps Network Rail has taken to strengthen its governance and coordination of stakeholder engagement, while also noting where further development and clearer evidence will be needed in future years. We are assured that Network Rail is taking its stakeholder engagement duty seriously and has begun work that will help improve reporting and consistency across CP7.

We will continue to monitor Network Rail’s progress and expect a more developed picture of its engagement activity in its Year 2 submission.

Our approach

Our CP6 approach has provided a good baseline understanding of Network Rail’s stakeholder engagement and has supported improvements in its approach. This enables our work across CP7 to be more streamlined by focusing efforts on the issues identified. In the event that substantive issues arise with Network Rail’s stakeholder engagement in CP7, we will work with it to understand and address the causes and will highlight to Network Rail areas for improvement.