Independent Review of the ORR: What It Means for Rail Safety and Competence

The Department for Business and Trade has published an independent regulatory review of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), led by Dr Richard Judge. Published in September 2026, it sets out how the regulator should evolve as rail reform takes shape and Great British Railways (GBR) becomes the "directing mind" of the railway.

For anyone working in rail competence, safety and assessment, the review matters. It signals a shift in how risk, proportionality and whole-of-system thinking will be judged over the next few years.

What the review set out to do

The review forms part of DBT's wider programme of regulator reviews, which assess performance and strategic alignment with government priorities, including economic growth. It examined how ORR is preparing for rail reform while continuing to deliver its established duties across rail safety, non-mainline rail and roads.

It is grounded in substantial evidence: more than 100 confidential interviews with stakeholders across government, industry and transport authorities, supported by DBT analysis and an independent expert panel. The findings capture ORR between December 2025 and June 2026, while the Railways Bill was progressing through Parliament.

The headline conclusion

The review describes an achievable pathway for ORR to move from being a respected regulator to an organisation with a rebalanced remit that also acts as an independent strategic advisor to the Secretary of State on the rail system as a whole.

Independence is central to that. It allows ORR to give objective, evidence-based advice, gather insight that might not otherwise be shared, and act as a fair intermediary. The review is clear that this independence is an asset to be deployed carefully alongside GBR's future role in taking integrated decisions.

Twelve recommendations

The review makes twelve recommendations with dates attached, running from December 2026 to September 2027:

R1. DfT, with ORR, Network Rail and DFTO, to publish a shared understanding of how ORR's revised purpose will be delivered in practice, including success measures, by December 2026.

R2. ORR to define the parameters of an organisational redesign, informed by a comprehensive skills, capability and culture audit, with the redesign finalised by June 2027.

R3. DfT and ORR to design a system-wide dashboard tracking overall rail system performance, with visibility of benchmarks and trade-offs, by September 2027.

R4. ORR, with industry, to establish a structured programme that accounts for whole-of-system effects in ALARP assessments, including societal externalities and risk transfer to roads, by March 2027.

R5. ORR, with industry, to publish "ways of working" principles for applying cost-benefit analyses and incorporating wider rail system factors, by March 2027.

R6. ORR to improve transparency around the rationale behind its safety priorities and interventions, by March 2027.

R7. DfT, consulting ORR and National Highways, to refresh and realign roads statutory and policy documents, by March 2027.

R8. DfT to take stock of the funding model for ORR's roads function, including closer alignment with rail models, by March 2027.

R9. DfT to consider how ORR could support long-term asset stewardship of the Strategic Road Network, by March 2027.

R10. ORR, with DfT, to design a regulated asset base framework for the Lower Thames Crossing, drawing on lessons from Ofgem, Ofwat and NISTA, by September 2027.

R11. ORR to embed greater road and rail integration in its future organisational design and internal working practices, by September 2027.

R12. Set out how ORR should support the Better Connected strategy.

Why safety and competence professionals should read it

Three themes stand out for anyone responsible for competence, assessment or safety assurance.

First, proportionality is being reframed. R4 and R5 push ORR and industry towards accounting for whole-of-system effects when judging whether risk controls are reasonably practicable. That includes how local decisions play out at system level, the interaction between multiple discrete safety interventions, and externalities beyond the railway, such as risk transferred to the roads. Duty holders should expect more structured questions about the evidence behind control choices, not fewer.

Second, transparency runs both ways. R6 commits ORR to being clearer about the rationale behind its priorities and interventions. In practice, organisations that can show a consistent, documented line from risk assessment through competence requirements to assessment evidence will find those conversations easier.

Third, capability is treated as a delivery risk. The review notes that the pace and scale of change could widen knowledge imbalances between ORR and the industries it regulates, and that future demands may look very different from those current practices were designed for. That is precisely the argument for investing in skills, capability and culture across the supply chain, not only inside the regulator.

What happens next

The review sets out early steps rather than a finished blueprint. Delivery depends on alignment between government, industry and ORR, and on the organisational redesign that follows the skills, capability and culture audit. The first milestone is the December 2026 publication describing what ORR's revised purpose means in practice.