Primary Functions
The ORR's main functions are:
- Regulation of Network Rail's stewardship of Britain's rail infrastructure.
- Reviewing and revising the financial framework for the railway industry through periodic access charges reviews in which the structure and level of the allowed revenues of Network Rail are set.
- Granting, modifying, compliance monitoring and enforcement of licences held by operators of railway assets.
- Controlling the fair and efficient allocation of capacity of railway assets through the approval or direction of contracts for the use of track, stations, and light maintenance depots.
- Acting as the appellate authority for certain classes of appeal of a regulatory or legal nature arising under the industry-wide network code.
- Enforcement of railway competition law.
- Independent health and safety regulation for the railway industry as parent body (since 2006) of HM Railway Inspectorate and for Personal Track Safety.
- Approval of changes made to the National Routeing Guide and National Rail Conditions of Carriage.
ORR produces what is known as "the Blue Book", officially titled Railway Safety Principles and Guidance, to ensure those operating the rail network, or designing products related to it, comply with health and safety law.
Read more about this topic: Office Of Rail Regulation
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or functions:
“The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)