UK: The Office of Rail & Road is consulting on proposals to open up the provision of train driver psychometric assessments to greater competition.
The Rail Assessment Centre Forum was established to ensure that the psychometric assessment process for the recruitment and monitoring of train drivers is applied correctly across the industry. It currently has 13 members, including train operating companies, freight operating companies and a private training specialist.
In March 2021 ORR opened a formal investigation into whether RACF’s membership rules infringed competition law. A particular concern was that it is necessary to be a member of RACF in order to enter the market, but there was no formal procedure for membership and consequently a lack of transparency as to the standards that applicants were required to meet.
RACF has now offered a number of commitments to address these problems:
- to adopt membership rules in the form agreed by ORR;
- to notify ORR of any changes to the membership rules;
- to make the rules, and an explanation, publicly available on the RACF website;
- to retain information on membership applications and decisions.
On January 27, ORR said its provisional view is that implementation of these commitments and rule changes would address its concerns, and is now inviting those who are likely to be affected to submit comments by March 3. If accepted, the commitments would become legally binding on RACF and ORR would end its investigation.
