British Railways Board: Safety Directorate and Predecessors: Records

AN 208

1948-1997

Records of the Safety Directorate and records inherited by it from the Regions and the Directorate of Operations. The records include files on policy (including major revisions of the rule book, the transport of nuclear waste and the use of asbestos), minutes of committee meetings, summary statistics, significant new working practices (e.g. driver-only operation), country-wide technical problems, significant accidents, and transfers of responsibility to Railtrack and other successors.

Broadly speaking, this series is divided into two sections - registered files and papers in AN 208/1-208 and committee records in AN 208/209-296 - with each section arranged in roughly chronological order. However, there are exceptions to this division: for example, BRB Safety Panel records are to be found at AN 208/73-76, 81, 83, 90, 91, 96, 99, 101, 103, 106, 107, 117, 119, 128 and 270-291.

Public Record(s)

English

296 files and volumes

Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

in 2004 BRB (Residuary) Ltd

Created and held by the British Railways Board. Passed to British Railways Board (Residuary) Ltd in February 2001.

1963-1996

Series is not accruing

Selected to illustrate the social, economic and demographic condition of the UK. Selected records include policy files and minutes of meetings.

Until the late 1980s there was no clear hierarchy at Board level for reviewing safety. Generally safety matters were dealt with at regional level, or through the Director of Operations. In 1988 a small Safety Directorate was created and a Director of Safety appointed. In response to the accidents at Clapham, Bellgrove and Purley in 1988 and 1989 the Safety Directorate was given corporate responsibility for safety on the railway including fire safety, health and safety at work and safety auditing. New committees such as the Safety Management Group and the Safety Panel (which authorised expenditure on safety related initiatives) were constituted. From 1991 an annual Safety Plan was published setting out objectives for safety performance and monitoring. In April 1994 responsibility for safety on the rail network passed to Railtrack leaving the Board to deal with safety issues within its remaining companies.