[2025] UKUT 00138 (LC)

The location of the Doncaster factory is important. NR manages the materials used in the maintenance of the railway by using a network of 11 Local Distribution Centres (“LDCs”), shown on the plan below, which was produced by Mr Heubeck:

Some materials, in particular ballast, are stockpiled at the LDCs for use when needed; sleepers are not, and therefore sleeper factories have to have storage capacity in order to cope with times of high demand. In the early 2000s NR adopted a policy of seeking to have sleepers produced at LDCs, so as to eliminate the cost of moving them from the factory to the nearest LDC. The TWM factory is at the Doncaster LDC. The WWH factory by contrast is not at an LDC, although it is not far from the LDC at Bescot, to which sleepers have to be taken for onward movement to a work site. The round trip from WWH to Bescot and back is 38 miles. There are 11 LDCs, and the following plan produced by Mr Heubeck indicates their geographical distribution:

Because WWH was not at an LDC, NR incurred an additional “trip cost” when it bought sleepers from WWH, being the cost of transport to the nearest LDC at Bescot (estimated by NR to be around £750,000 per annum; see paragraph 27 below). It was Mr Jarvis’s evidence that this was not a significant concern for NR and certainly did not give rise to any preference for buying from TWM, because more important than cost was deliverability. WWH’s proximity to the WCML made it an important and reliable source of supply for the western side of the country. Mr Heubeck disagreed with that evidence, and we shall have to say more about that disagreement later.