We regulate access to stations by allowing access agreements to the station in accordance with the provisions of the Railway Act 1993. Most stations are leased to and operated by one or the other company of franchised train operators. A complete list of the consolidated agreements we have with our existing clients can be found on the ORR website. This page will be used as a summary of all presentation documents published by the ORR regarding access to stations and depots, including access agreements, access conditions, annexes, amending documents and modification agreements. Network Rail operates the main stations consisting of: the SoAR body must authorise all our sales of access rights prior to the consultation of the sector and the agreed railway access contract (ORR) is submitted for approval to the Office of Railways and Roads (ORR). It must also approve our response to the ORR with respect to the disputed requests. In some cases, derogations apply, which lift the requirement for a specific authorisation for agreed and controversial sales. Our SoAR (Sale of Access Rights) panel provides network-wide control of the process of negotiating and agreeing to sell access to train operators. The main task of the SoAR panel is to ensure that we apply, where appropriate, a consistent approach across the network and that we exploit the overall capacity optimally and at an acceptable level of performance. Network Rail owns the vast majority of the UK`s approximately 2,500 stations.
A number of resources are available for customers who are expanding their rail business: see our Operator Information page and our rail freight sites. National conditions of access to the station (FRI leases) 2011. . . .
