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:
“But the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations to the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)