Each year, licence holders must provide Waka Kotahi with a Safety Performance Report. This allows us to monitor the performance of individual licence holders and is valuable in helping us understand the overall safety performance of the rail sector. It also provides us with information about the size of the sector, which is vital for planning our services and informing government policy.
In preparation for the annual surveys, the Rail Safety Regulator will provide advance notice to the safety liaison officer for each licence holder and advise the type of questions that will be asked. This will help them gather the information, making the process much easier and the data more accurate.
As well as being a key tool for Waka Kotahi in understanding the rail industry, the Safety Performance Report data ensures the annual charges every licence holder must pay are accurate and fair.
The Safety Performance Report collects data from each licence holder for the previous 12 months. This includes:
Waka Kotahi does not wish to increase the administrative work of licence holders. We expect most licence holders will collect this information as part of monitoring their own activity and safety performance.
While it is acceptable for a licence holder to estimate this data, we would prefer a licence holder to report to us actual values. There are only minor variations to the questions from year to year, so we encourage licence holders to set up systems to ensure they are can easily complete their Safety Performance Report.
Under Section 30(external link) of the Railways Act, licence holders are required to report their safety performance factors to Waka Kotahi. If a licence holder does not provide this information, Waka Kotahi is empowered under Regulation 5 of the Railways Regulations 2019 to make an estimate of their rail safety annual charge.
While we will use the best available data to make an estimate, licence holders run the risk of their annual charge being higher than what they would have otherwise paid.
