The Regulation of the Privatised Railways in Britain

Abstract

There has been a distinct trend in the complexity of the structural and regulatory reforms that have accompanied the privatisations of major network industries in the United Kingdom. British Telecom (1984) and British Gas (1986) were transferred to the private sector without major restructuring (although British Gas had been stripped of its offshore oil interests in 1983). The privatisation of the water industry (1989) saw the removal of some environmental protection functions from the water authorities before they were sold, and the separation of monopoly and environmental regulation (which had earlier been implicitly bundled). Electricity privatisation (1990 and 1991) was the first major privatisation in which there was substantial industrial restructuring prior to flotation: the major generation and transmission corporation, the Central Electricity Generating Board was split into a transmission company and three generating companies, one of which was specialised in nuclear generation and was retained in the public sector.