[2025] UKUT 00138 (LC)

For Mr Jarvis, those factors are temporary and do not indicate that requirement will remain low. Expenditure on track renewal is both cyclical and unavoidable. It is cyclical in that it rises and falls across several decades. In the 1980s and 1990s in the run-up to privatisation money was tight; there was the crash at Hatfield in October 2000 when four people died; and then expenditure rose in the next two decades with NR “playing catch-up”, with “all sorts of money being spent on track renewals” – including the WCML project between Stoke and Manchester, which was completed in 2009. Expenditure reached a high in 2014/15, and it is now at a low point in the cycle. His view of the points identified in the sleepers’ experts’ SAFI, set out above, was that they were temporary and did not represent a systemic change. The track renewal trains did use some extra sleepers but not many; the additional work done in the first two decades of the millennium will, before long, need re-doing because of the finite lifespan of sleepers; improved detection systems do not mean that sleepers do not have to be replaced; and as to funding constraints, in his experience where sleepers require renewal money is found, because NR puts safety first.

In Mr Jarvis’s view the low demand in CP6 is explained almost entirely by the pandemic and its after-effects; government funding sustained the railways during the pandemic, but efficiencies were demanded thereafter and expenditure has had to be cut back. But it must revive, because it is driven by the lifespan of a sleeper, which he reckoned to be about 30 years and because sleepers are safety-critical components, the renewal of sleepers is unavoidable. NR will have to catch up from its current low levels.

In his first witness statement, written in June 2024 before NR’s requirement figures were available, Mr Jarvis predicted that once the stockpile has been exhausted demand will rise and revert to its usual average of 750,000 per annum. In his second witness statement he referred to the planning statement supporting NR’s application for planning permission for the factory at Bescot, where it was said that NR needed “up to 1,000,000 sleepers each year” and to Mr Curtis’ witness statement where it was said that the average annual demand was 750,000. When that statement was written NR had produced figures for its requirement up to 2019/20 but not beyond, and Mr Jarvis predicted a minimum requirement of 500,000 for each of the latter years of CP6. He noted that the Strategic Business Plan for CP7 indicated a 20% drop in expenditure on track renewal in CP7 and therefore predicted an average of 400,000 per annum. But he insisted that because sleepers are a safety critical product demand would then have to rise “substantially” into CP8 and beyond to offset the current underspend; he predicted a “bow wave” effect – by which he meant a spike in demand – in the latter part of CP 7 and/or into CP8 and CP9. He therefore expected that the average sleeper requirement for “CP6, CP7, CP8 and beyond” would be “in the order of 600,000 to 650,000” per annum. He pointed out that this was a conservative forecast and assumed a sleeper lifespan of 42 years.

Essentially Mr Jarvis’ view rested on two convictions: that sleepers have a lifespan of about 30 years, and that when they need replacing money will be found to do so.

In support of his views about lifespan Mr Jarvis referred to a presentation given by Mr Darren Sharp, a Principal Engineer for Network rail, in December 2023 entitled “Decarbonising and Sustaining Track”. The material available comprises PowerPoint slides rather than the text of the presentation; and the subject matter was, obviously, strategies for reducing carbon emissions by means for example of recycling ballast. One of the slides set out a “Life Cycle Assessment” for sleepers, and included a table one of whose columns set out “Average Life Expectancy (Track System)” for different types of sleepers. Figures ranged from 30 years for concrete sleepers without USPs, to 40 years for recycled plastic composite sleepers; but it was impossible to be clear whether the figures given were for when the sleeper wears out, or for when the track as a whole wears out. Sleepers are more durable than either ballast or rails, and so if the figures refer to the life expectancy of the track then they tell us nothing about the lifespan of the sleeper. We were therefore not assisted by the presentation.

Mr Jarvis was asked for his comments on Mr Heubeck’s view that sleepers can last up to 60 years, and said he thought that could not be right because the industry is still “working to” a lifespan of 30 years. But it is difficult to know what that means; Mr Jarvis agreed that replacement of sleepers is driven by their condition, not by their age.