In our latest annual assessment, we find that Network Rail has continued to deliver efficiencies in how it operates, maintains and renews the national rail infrastructure. However, we also report that the company will deliver fewer renewals than originally planned.
Why is this?
Efficiency measures the drivers of cost changes and focuses on Network Rail’s operations, support, maintenance and renewals activities. It assesses whether Network Rail is reducing the cost of delivering its plans through improved ways of working, technology, access arrangements, contracting strategies and so on. Efficiencies can also be delivered by realising more work for an unchanged or reduced level of expenditure.
In 2025-26, Network Rail delivered £614 million of efficiency improvements, 4% ahead of the regulatory target for the year. This builds on the £325 million of efficiencies delivered in 2024-25, which were also ahead of target.
However, Network Rail has also faced significant pressures on its largely fixed budget, notably from higher general inflation and input prices. Over the first two years of CP7, these pressures added around £978 million to the cost of delivering the railway. As a result, Network Rail has needed to revise its delivery plans.
Efficiencies and renewals
The funding settlement for CP7 was based on a “post-efficient” plan. This means expected efficiencies were already built into the funding settlement at PR23. Approximately two-thirds of Network Rail’s five-year funding settlement is fixed (with most of the rest coming from inflation-linked access charges), meaning the company has to manage inflation risk for the full five-year control period. Delivering efficiencies is essential for Network Rail to achieve the planned level of work across renewals, maintenance and operation of the network.
In the first two years of CP7, the efficiencies delivered have been offset by higher than forecast inflation and other cost pressures. This has required Network Rail to make trade-offs, including adjusting the volume or timing of renewals.
What’s on the horizon?
To help counter some of the recent pressures faced, including inflation, Network Rail has identified additional efficiencies and increased its efficiency challenge from the regulatory target of £3.9 billion to £4.1 billion. We welcome this additional challenge that the company has set itself, which will go some way towards mitigating the pressures on reductions in renewals volumes. However, there is only so far this will go and it is not forecast to offset the reduction in renewals volumes – which for England & Wales is expected to be down around 17% on what was originally planned (down 12% across the GB network).
Network Rail must continue to demonstrate how it will mitigate the effects of declining asset condition and the impact on safety and performance outcomes in future years. This is important not just as we review Network Rail’s performance against the CP7 settlement but also as we work with government ahead of the creation of Great British Railways and prepare for the next funding period.
Our Annual Efficiency and Finance Assessment, due to be published this autumn, will look more closely at the relationship between efficiency, funding, external cost pressures, and their impact on the Financial Performance Measure (FPM) – which is our primary measure of the company’s overall financial performance.
