The Brown Review of the rail franchising programme

The competition held by the Department for Transport to award a new InterCity West Coast franchise in 2012 was intended to be the first in the most extensive programme of franchising since privatisation.

Significant errors were made by the Department during the competition, which not only caused the cancellation of that franchise award at considerable public expense but also called into question the remaining franchising programme.

This report is the second of two independent reviews commissioned by the Government, by Richard Brown, the Chairman of Eurostar.

It concludes that franchising is a fundamentally sound approach for securing the passenger railway services on which so many people rely. His recommendations include: that the franchising programme should be restarted as soon as possible, but at a pace that both the department and the industry can sustain; that franchise terms should be determined by the circumstances and size of each individual franchise; proposals to strengthen and simplify the bidding and evaluation process for each franchise; proposals for the financial and contractual structure of future franchises, including in relation to risk allocation and capital requirements; and that the government should plan to devolve responsibility for further English franchises to the relevant authorities.

Mr Brown also makes recommendations on how to strengthen the department's capability to manage the future franchising programme, echoing the findings of Sam Laidlaw's independent inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from the InterCity West Coast competition.

The review also recommends that the Government should determine, by February, plans for the three franchise competitions which were put on hold