Rail Reform is a priority for the Department for Transport (DfT). Ahead of primary legislation, which is required to transfer the franchising authority and fully establish Great British Railways (GBR), DfT is focusing on three priorities:

• Delivering reforms for customers and the taxpayer which are not dependent on legislation.
• Driving more whole system thinking within the current accountability framework, enhancing collaboration across the Department, GBRTT, Network Rail and with wider stakeholders to front-end some of the benefits initially planned to be realised after the establishment of GBR.
• Preparing for the end state, including pre-legislative scrutiny of the Draft Rail Reform Bill and developing the future commercial model.

Together with select partners, The Hub is DfT’s Technical Advisor for Rail Reform.

Our scope under this framework consists of:

• Providing strategy and planning advice and strategy assistance to help the Rail Reform Portfolio deliver the in-scope areas of rail reform.
• Developing advice options; and reach consensus on advice positions in a timely fashion.
• Providing business case support and development of DfT business cases and review and analysis of industry business cases.
• Working with DfT teams to identify and support in the development of suitable solutions to design and policy questions/ concerns.
• Providing DfT with support on accountability policy within the rail modal interface.
• Supporting strategic corporate planning by developing organisational change strategies to support client in the delivery of changes attached to organisational design work.
• Supporting strategic corporate planning by developing change strategy for cross-sector change programme linked to structural reform.

• We developed an Accountability Framework for the future state of the industry, working with DfT, Network Rail and others to inform Ministers of options.
• We developed a coherence testing approach to interrogate governance proposals by DfT’s policy teams, testing for coherence and consistency in approach and assumptions.
• We supported the creation of the Target Sector Operating Model (STOM) through development of industry value chains, process mapping and definition of roles and responsibilities.