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"What is Network Rail?
Network Rail (NR) was set up in 2002 to replace Railtrack as the body responsible for Britain's rail network. It holds a monopoly over Britain's rail infrastructure, a major national asset, and as such is rigorously monitored to ensure accountability to the public interest. Its network operating licence was originally issued to Railtrack on March 31st 1994.
As a result NR is limited by guarantee, which means it operates as a private company without a profit-making function. Instead of shareholders, members drawn from the rail industry and the general public hold the board to account by reviewing its performance against pre-set targets. The Department for Transport (DfT) is also a member, providing it with substantial subsidies each year.
NR's primary purpose is the maintenance of Britain's rail infrastructure, which includes tracks, stations, bridges, tunnels and signalling assets. It does not control the rolling stock of passenger and freight trains but its structure is organised according to eight major routes to aid closer relations with train and freight companies. These are Scotland, North-Eastern, North-Western, Western, Anglia, Wessex, Sussex and Kent.
Background
After being set up on March 25th 2002 NR assumed control of responsibility for the rail network on October 3rd of that year. Initial assessments of its inheritance were bleak; more than one-fifth of trains were not running on time, while a March 28th 2003 report bemoaned the lack of investment seen in recent years.
Initial good progress saw a seven per cent reduction in delays by March 31st 2004, while the acquirement of funding worth £22 billion over a five-year period enabled it to begin improving the network. The government rewarded NR with new responsibilities in a July 2004 White Paper, handing over monitoring and train performance reporting duties from the abolished Strategic Rail Authority. In the same month NR doubled the number of its employees by taking maintenance in-house.
NR's progress continued to be monitored by the Office for Rail Regulation (ORR), whose quarterly monitoring documents saw improvements in safety risk, delay minutes and its 'public performance measure'. It began raising only partially-met concerns about infrastructure management issues causing problems from mid-2006, however, while the quarter to September 2007 noted the delivery of major schemes were becoming a "major challenge". "