Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to Table 1 of her Department's document entitled Fixing the Foundations: Public spending audit 2024-25, CP 1133, what the evidential basis is for saying there was an additional £1.3 billion cost for rail maintenance in the 2024-25 financial year.

Rail infrastructure is managed by Network Rail (NR). The Department for Transport (DfT) provides grant funding to NR for operations, maintenance, and renewals via five-year regulated ‘Control Periods’. Funding for each Control Period is established through a statutory process of Periodic Reviews, the timelines for which have not aligned with Spending Review periods.

At Spending Review 2021, DfT’s budgets were set for a period (2021/22-2024/25) which extended beyond the end of the previous Control Period (Control Period 6, 2019/20-2023/24). The periodic review to determine Control Period 7 (2024/25-2028/29) concluded in October 2023, confirming the funding requirements for 2024/25. Therefore, the assumption for maintenance costs in 2024/25 had to be revised following the periodic review in 2023 as these costs were higher than budgeted at SR21.