[2025] UKUT 00138 (LC)

The sleeper factory at WWH was purpose-built in 1989 and commenced operation in 1990. It had a maximum annual production capacity of 600,000 sleepers. According to Cemex it provided up to 60% of NR’s annual requirement until 2016; the authority does not challenge that but points out that it is impossible to check on the information available. Because of the location of WWH, and the way the railway network is laid out (with more north-south lines than east-west since the Beeching cuts), the claimant has mostly supplied the west and south-west of England, including the WCML, and Wales. The eastern side of the country was served in the 1990s by a factory owned by Tarmac Building Products at Tallington on the East Coast Main Line, which ceased production in 2014. Since 2014 the other supplier in this duopoly has been a factory at Doncaster, built in 2012 and operated by Trackwork-Moll Limited (“TWM”), a joint venture between Trackwork Limited and Leonhard Moll Betonwerke AG. It has a maximum annual production capacity of approximately 400,000 sleepers and was working at full capacity by the end of 2016.

Cemex held WWH on five leases from GB Railfreight Ltd, four relating to areas which the parties have called areas A-D, and the fifth being of an access roadway – area R. The leases of areas A, C, D and R were granted in the 1980s and 1990s and were within the protection of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Those leases were due to expire on 24 March 2025, with Cemex having the statutory right to renew. The lease of Area B was granted in 2006, with a term commencing in 2000 and expiring in 2025. It was contracted out of sections 24-28 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, meaning Cemex had no statutory right to renew. Area B was located to the southwest of the remaining land and was used primarily for the storage of sleepers.

There are two principal methods of making sleepers. WWH used, and the TWM factory uses, the long line method whereby sleepers are cast in moulds laid out in a long line, with concrete being brought to the moulds and poured in around long steel cables under tension. The alternative is the carousel method, in which sleeper moulds are moved around the factory, with each sleeper being cast in moulds which radiate from a central point, each having separate steel cables under tension. The long line method needs more space, and more capital investment; the carousel method can be accommodated in a smaller space and is cheaper to build, but it has more moving parts, equipment needs replacing more frequently, and each tension requires periodic checking. As Mr Jarvis put it, “within the industry there are differing schools of thought as to which is the optimum method.”