Written evidence submitted by Abellio Group (RLS0026)

Railway Safety Arrangements

Applying for a licence to operate:

• A TOC must comply with all the existing Health, Safety and Welfare regulations that apply to Industry in general and the railway in particular.
• The ORR grants TOCs a licence to operate trains and manage infrastructure at the start of a new franchise, and at regular intervals thereafter.
• The TOC makes an application to the ORR for these licences, as well as providing supporting evidence.
• This evidence must show that a safety management system (SMS) is in place and that it meets the requirements of the regulations and is applied satisfactorily.
• Any affected parties that could be impacted by the TOC are also consulted at the time of application. The TOC must provide details of the SMS to those parties.
• The affected parties are obliged to advise the ORR and the TOC of any concerns that they may have, which may result in changes to the SMS.
• There must also be a consultation by the TOC with employees on the application and the implementation of the SMS. This forms part of the evidence given to the ORR.
• The ORR then examines the evidence, often asking for further detail about the SMS and its implementation before granting or refusing a licence.
• The process can take up to six months for a licence application to be processed and considered, before a decision is made on granting it.

Maintaining a licence to operate:

• Once the TOC is operating as a railway undertaking, it must maintain the SMS.

• TOCs will apply for recognised accreditation of its SMS from organisations such as the International Organization for Standardization (IOS) or BSI. This will include annual audits of the SMS and its implementation and gives the SMS an independent, external validation.
• Alongside this, TOCs will conduct a programme of risk based internal audits on their own SMS and its implementation.
• The ORR will also conduct regular and targeted inspections of the TOC, as well as monitoring the safety performance of the TOC via its inspectorate.

Industry Engagement:

• The TOC is required to be a member of and participate in industry safety arrangements – including those facilitated by the RSSB.
• This includes incident reporting via industry systems on safety incidents facilitated by the RSSB, and support of the recently agreed ‘Leading Health and safety on Britain’s Railway’ Industry strategy.
• The TOC will participate in safety forums and research and best practice activity as facilitated by the Rail Delivery Group ‘System Safety Risk’ group and its sub groups.

Safety Arrangements:

• As part of the SMS a TOC is required to have the necessary arrangements in place as described by the ORR licence requirements, structured along examples given in guidance such as HSG 65 or ISO standards and the ORR RM3 model.
• The confidential reporting system ‘CIRAS’ acts as a ‘whistleblowing’ opportunity for any employee to report on concerns with safety in the railway. This is operated independently of TOCs and is monitored by the ORR.
• Every TOC will insist that employees are aware of the requirement not to carry out any duty or activity if the employee considers it to be unsafe.

January 2017