Railways Act 1993
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Railways Act 1993 is the legislation introduced by John Major's Conservative government and passed on 5 November 1993.
The legislation provided for the restructuring of the British Railways Board, the monolithic vertically integrated public corporation which owned and operated the national railway system.
The legislation enabled the Secretary of State for Transport to transfer the separated parts of the railway to the private sector. Using these powers, he franchised passenger rail services to various private companies including Virgin, Connex and the coach companies Stagecoach and National Express, and floated the national railway track and signalling company Railtrack on the London stock exchange in 1996. He also sold British Rail's track maintenance and renewal operations to private companies, with contracts to provide these infrastructure services to Railtrack. And he sold the three companies which together owned the national passenger rail rolling stock fleet - the rolling stock leasing companies or ROSCOs - to management buyout teams.
The legislation also created a new regulatory regime for the railways, with the establishment of the Rail Regulator (dealing with the monopoly and dominant elements of the industry, principally Railtrack (now Network Rail)) and the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising whose role was to sell passenger rail franchises to the private sector. The Director of Passenger Rail Franchising was abolished and replaced in 2001 by the Strategic Rail Authority and then, when the SRA was abolished in 2006, the franchising functions were taken over by the Secretary of State for Transport. The statutory position of Rail Regulator was abolished in July 2004 and his functions were taken over by the Office of Rail Regulation.
The legislation has been amended several times, most significantly by the Transport Act 2000, the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 and the Railways Act 2005.
Railtrack collapsed in highly controversial circumstances in October 2001, and in October 2002 the company emerged from railway administration - a special state of insolvency for railway companies created by the Railways Act 1993 - renamed Network Rail. Some commentators regard the creation of Network Rail - and its taking maintenance in-house - as the beginning of the reversal of rail privatisation.
