Schedule 8 compensation — structure, rates, and the counterfactual

Schedule 8 is the contractual mechanism under which Network Rail compensates train operating companies — including freight operating companies — for delays attributable to Network Rail’s infrastructure. Operators in turn compensate Network Rail for delays attributable to rolling stock or crew. The rates are set by the Office of Rail and Road for each control period as part of the periodic review.

CP7 rates

For Control Period 7 (2024–2029), the ORR set two Schedule 8 compensation rates. Network Rail pays operators £25.81 per minute (2022-23 base) of attributable delay. Operators pay Network Rail £51.98 per minute (2022-23 base) in the reverse direction. The asymmetry — roughly 2:1, operators paying Network Rail twice the rate Network Rail pays operators — reflects the different cost bases and risk profiles each side is hedging.

Network Rail’s infrastructure delays propagate across many paths simultaneously; a single-operator rolling-stock failure affects only that operator’s services.

These rates are stated per minute of delay at final destination, measured against the Working Timetable booked arrival. They apply uniformly across all freight operating companies. There is no per-operator negotiation of the base rate within a control period, though operators may hold bespoke access agreements that modify the applicable paths.

The rates were confirmed in the ORR’s PR23 Final Determination (November 2022) and entered force on 1 April 2024. They are indexed for inflation annually within the control period; the 2025-26 indexed rate is approximately £28.42 per minute (2025-26 CPI-indexed from £25.81 base) payable by Network Rail. Gauge Intelligence uses the CP7 base rates in its public methodology disclosures and adjusts when publishing licensed-tier figures.

Source documents: ORR track access conditions (Network Code, Part J), the PR23 Final Determination, and the individual freight access agreements held by each operator under the regulator’s access approval process.

The counterfactual structure

Gauge Intelligence does not publish gross Schedule 8 totals for individual operators. The reason is epistemic, not commercial: a gross total conflates infrastructure-caused delay with operator-caused delay, and presents the combined figure as if it were a statement about infrastructure quality. It is not. The settlement is bilateral; the net position depends on both sides of the ledger.

The quantity that has analytical content is the counterfactual delta: how much better or worse is this operator’s Schedule 8 net position compared to a benchmark period, controlling for network-wide infrastructure performance? That delta isolates operator-specific signal from shared network noise.

The benchmark we apply is operator-specific: the trailing eight-period mean of the operator’s own net position, computed over closed periods with complete TRUST coverage. A period is an outlier when its net position falls outside 1.5 interquartile ranges from that trailing benchmark. We report the delta from benchmark, not the absolute position.

This framing is consistent with how Network Rail and the ORR themselves interpret Schedule 8 data in regulatory contexts — the ORR’s annual freight performance monitoring reports consistently use period-on-period comparisons rather than absolute totals.

What Gauge Intelligence does and does not publish

The public archive — this site — publishes:

• The CP7 rates, as stated above, so readers can understand the financial scale of each minute of delay
• The counterfactual framing and methodology, so the basis of any licensed-tier figure is fully transparent
• Directional statements (e.g. “operators pay Network Rail roughly twice the rate Network Rail pays operators”) derived from the 2:1 rate asymmetry
• Period-level delay counts (minutes, service-count) from TRUST, which are the inputs to the Schedule 8 calculation

The public archive does not publish:

• Gross Schedule 8 totals for named operators
• Bilateral net positions (NR-to-FOC minus FOC-to-NR) by period
• CP7-cumulative liability or credit positions
• Financial entitlement forecasts or P-band projections

These are the licensed product. The commercial boundary exists not to restrict information for its own sake, but because the net position requires attribution confidence — a judgment about which delays to assign to which party — that carries analytical risk. Publishing attribution-dependent financial figures without the full reconciliation methodology and confidence intervals would be less useful and potentially misleading.

Licensed-tier delivery includes the full attribution breakdown, confidence bands, and dispute-flag analysis that the gross total omits.

Data sources

Schedule 8 delay inputs are derived from the NROD TRUST feed, specifically from terminal-arrival movement events matched against the Working Timetable booked arrival. Cancellations are counted at their attributed cause code. Delay attribution — the allocation of each delay minute to either Network Rail or the operator — follows the DAPR (Delay Attribution Principles and Rules) published by the Performance Analysis Group.

The TRUST feed is the authoritative source for public archive figures. Where TRUST and the Historic Delay Attribution database diverge on a specific service, TRUST takes precedence for real-time reporting and the historic record is used for retrospective reconciliation in licensed-tier outputs.

For background on what the TRUST feed observes, deduces, and cannot see, see the data window methodology. For the operator ranking approach, including corridor-stratified rankings and Simpson’s paradox detection, see the league-table methodology.

Relationship to this page

This methodology page is the transparency anchor for the Schedule 8 disclosure row on each operator entity page. The disclosure row renders the CP7 rates, states that the bilateral net position is the licensed product, and links here for the full structural explanation. Readers who want to understand why the net position is not published on the free tier will find the complete reasoning above.

Questions about access to licensed-tier Schedule 8 data should be directed to the contact details on the main Gauge Intelligence website.