Audit

• System Operator
• Our history
  • The George Stephenson notebook
  • The Network Rail archive
  • Eminent engineers
    • Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859)
    • William Henry Barlow (1812–1902)
    • George Stephenson (1781–1848)
    • Robert Stephenson (1803–1859)
  • Iconic infrastructure
    • The history of Box Tunnel, Wiltshire
    • The history of the Britannia Bridge, North Wales
    • The history of the Forth Bridge, Fife
    • The history of the High Level Bridge, Newcastle
    • The history of the Royal Border Bridge, Berwick
    • The history of the Tay Bridge, Dundee
    • The history of Bristol Temple Meads station
    • The history of Birmingham New Street station
    • The history of Charing Cross station
    • The history of London Euston station
    • The history of London King’s Cross station
    • The history of London Bridge station
    • The history of Leeds station
    • The history of London Liverpool Street station
    • The history of Manchester Piccadilly station
    • The history of London Paddington station
    • The history of London St Pancras International station
    • The history of London Victoria station
    • The history of London Waterloo station
    • The history of the Maidenhead Bridge
    • The history of Glasgow Central station
    • The history of Edinburgh Waverley station
    • The history of London Cannon Street station
  • Working with railway heritage
  • Where to find railway records
  • Railway 200
• Publications and resources
  • Financial
  • Regulatory and licensing
    • Annual report and accounts
    • Annual return
    • Half-year performance report
  • Our Control Period 7 (CP7) delivery plans
  • Network Operating Strategy
  • The Future of Cities report
  • Pay Gap Reports
• Transparency and ethics
  • Transparency
    • Open data feeds
    • Our information and data
  • Data protection
  • Ethics
    • Modern Slavery Statement
  • Freedom of information (FOI)
• Our approach to safety
  • Home Safe Plan
  • Keeping our workforce safe
  • Our Health and Safety vision
  • Safety assurance
    • Accident and incident investigations
    • Audit
    • Risk management
    • Supplier assurance
• Equity, diversity and inclusion
  • Access and inclusion
    • Inclusive design
      • Built Environment Accessibility Panel
  • Everyone Belongs strategy
  • Everyday inclusion
• How we work
  • Performance
    • Railway Performance
  • Our leadership
    • Our executive leadership team
    • Our board committees
    • Our board
      • Accountabilities
      • Approvals and statements of responsibilities

We carry out regular safety audits through our safety assurance framework

Our Safety, Technical and Engineering (STE) team carries out approximately 25 independent Functional Audits per year. These audits are part of the team’s Level Two Functional Audit Programme (FAP) for Network Operations (the function of the business that operates the railway day to day).

Through FAP, the team provides safety assurance at operational sites such as managed stations, rail operating centres and electrical control rooms, and has introduced assurance activities within route health and safety procedures.

The FAP team carries out second line assurance activities by sampling key safety risks and working through our control framework to make sure that the control barriers that are in place are effective and applied.

Technical experts from Track, Signalling and Electrification and Plant conduct discipline-specific audits – looking at and working with our teams around the country in conjunction with our FAP team. This helps to provide an overview of compliance against mandated standards and working practices.

When the FAP team finds a control weakness they raise a Non-Conformance Report (NCR), which helps us improve and meet the standards required by compliance. The team records and manages the NCRs they issue in a central database, and auditees can update their progress and upload the necessary evidence. This data is used to highlight trends and provide Key Performance Indicator reports to the business.