The Railways Infrastructure (Access, Management and Licensing of Railway Undertakings) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016

[F1 Independence of the infrastructure manager N.I.

8A.— (1) Subject to paragraph (5), the infrastructure manager, in its legal form, must be independent of any railway undertaking and, in vertically integrated undertakings, also be independent of any other legal entity within the undertaking.

(2) In vertically integrated undertakings, the other legal entities must not exercise any decisive influence on the decisions of the infrastructure manager in relation to the essential functions.

(3) Members of the supervisory board and the management board, and managers reporting directly to them, must act in a non-discriminatory manner and their impartiality must not be affected by any conflict of interest.

(4) The same individuals cannot be concurrently appointed or employed—

(a) as members of the management board or an infrastructure manager and as members of the management board of a railway undertaking;

(b) as persons in charge of taking decisions on the essential functions and as members of the management board of a railway undertaking;

(c) where a supervisory board exists, as members of the supervisory board of an infrastructure manager and as members of the supervisory board of a railway undertaking;

(d) as members of the supervisory board of an undertaking which is part of a vertically integrated undertaking and which exercises control over both a railway undertaking and an infrastructure manager and as members of the management board of that infrastructure manager.

(5) Paragraph (1) and sub-paragraphs (c) and (d) of paragraph (3) do not apply where infrastructure charging and path allocation functions are performed by a charging body and an allocation body by virtue of regulations 14(6) and 19(3) respectively.

(6) In vertically integrated undertakings, the members of the management board of the infrastructure manager and the persons in charge of taking decisions on the essential functions must not receive—

(a) any performance-based remuneration from any other legal entities within the vertically integrated undertaking, or

(b) any bonuses principally related to the financial performance of particular railway undertakings,

however, they may be offered incentives related to the overall performance of the railway system.

(7) Where information systems are common to different entities within a vertically integrated undertaking, access to sensitive information relating to essential functions must be restricted to authorised staff of the infrastructure manager and not passed on to other entities within the vertically integrated undertaking.]

Textual Amendments

F1 Regs. 8A-8C inserted (15.3.2019) by The Railways Infrastructure (Access, Management and Licensing of Railway Undertakings) (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2019 (S.R. 2019/15), regs. 1(1), 6