[2025] UKUT 00138 (LC)

For the Secretary of State, Mr Heubeck said that Mr Jarvis’s estimate of an average demand of 750,000 sleepers per annum was “only broadly correct” during the years of high demand and that the “true average” was lower. Turning to the future, for him the factors set out in the SAFI (paragraph 98 above) mark a long-term change such that the requirement for sleepers will not return to the levels seen in the 2010s. The track renewal trains replaced significantly more sleepers than actually needed to be replaced. The high level of work done between 2002 to 2018 put the system in very good shape and sleeper lifespan is now much longer than 30 years. Improved detection systems, assessing the condition of sleepers remotely, mean that targeted renewal can be done much more accurately than it was in the days when assessment was done by visual inspection. Resources, on the other hand, are tight and look set to remain so.

In support of his position about the lifespan of a sleeper, Mr Heubeck relied upon three documents. One was a table produced in 2008 by Richard Spoors Associates Limited, and the second a study by that company in 2009/10 which examined sleepers at track renewal sites in order to assess whether track was being renewed prematurely. He claimed that it showed that sleepers with pre-Pandrol clips could achieve a lifespan of 40 years. Ms Clutten in cross-examination put it to him that most of the sleepers in the table would have had Pandrol clips, on the basis of their age, and he agreed. The third document was a study by Purbrick and Cope in 1981 which predicted that sleepers with Pandrol clips could achieve a life of 50 years.

For Mr Heubeck, a major factor that will drive down rates of renewal of sleepers is climate change. Increased frequency of extreme weather leads to floods, to track and embankment being washed away, and to prioritisation of safety-critical work other than the renewal of sleepers.

For his predictions of future requirement Mr Heubeck took the current demand as the baseline, but out of caution took it to be 350,000 rather than the actual 307,000. He predicted that the requirement may be less in CP7 (as did Mr Jarvis, and as does NR’s Strategic Business Plan for CP7), but that there would be modest growth in CP8 and stronger growth in CP9, thus recognising that some recovery is going to be needed. In an endeavour to put figures to those words, he considered a number of scenarios: no growth, low growth (10% to 20% in CP8), medium growth (30 – 40% in CP8) and high growth (50% or more in CP8), and concluded that, on the basis of the funding likely to be available, low growth would be the most likely and the other scenarios all unlikely. He quantified low growth as 350,000 per annum in CP7, 70,000 more per annum (up to a maximum of 420,000) in CP8, and another 70,000 in CP9 up to a maximum of 490,000 (thus adding 20% of 350,000 in CP8 and again in CP9).