Metronet

Metronet Rail was the brand of a public-private partnership within the London Underground group that was responsible for the maintenance, renewal, and upgrade of the infrastructure on nine London Underground lines. This includes track, trains, signals, civil work and stations. From 18 July 2007 to 26 May 2008, the company was in administration and had to be bailed out by the government. On 27 May 2008, the company was transferred back into public ownership under the authority of Transport for London. In June 2009 the National Audit Office estimated that the failure of the Metronet PPP contract cost the taxpayer up to £410m adding that "most of the blame for Metronet's collapse lay with the consortium itself." The administration complete, the joint administrators petitioned the High Court of Justice for the winding-up of the company on the 3 November 2009, the petition is due to be heard on the 10 December 2009.

On Sunday 7 December 2008 Metronet Rail employees were transferred to LUL. From 18 April 2009 the company name ceased to exist and is now fully integrated with London Underground and now operates with the name as London Underground Limited.

Before Metronet Rail entered PPP Administration, it had five shareholders:


 * Atkins,
 * Balfour Beatty,
 * Bombardier,
 * EDF Energy, and
 * Thames Water.

The Metronet Rail brand consists of LUL Nominee BCV Limited, trading as Metronet Rail BCV, and LUL Nominee SSL Limited, trading as Metronet Rail SSL: the group operates under the common name of Metronet Rail.

From January 2003 to May 2008, the London Underground was operated as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), where the infrastructure and support services were maintained by private companies but the London Underground was still publicly owned and operated by Transport for London (TfL). Metronet Rail won a 30-year contract for the following tube and sub-surface lines:

BCV (tube) lines
 * Bakerloo
 * Central
 * Victoria
 * Waterloo & City

SSL (sub-surface) lines
 * Circle
 * District
 * East London
 * Hammersmith & City
 * Metropolitan

Under the terms of the contract, Metronet Rail agreed to provide London Underground (LU) with trains, stations, and related infrastructure to the standards and performance levels required to give the travelling public a reliable service in a safe, efficient, and economic manner. LU paid the Metronet Rail consortium an infrastructure service charge (ISC) - a monthly payment increased or abated to reflect the network's performance. Revenue to the consortium was reduced if service fell below benchmark levels and deductions suffered for poor performance were at twice the rate of the increase in revenue for improved performance.

Metronet Rail had promised to modernise and refurbish 150 stations by 2012, with £17 billion invested over the course of the 30-year contract. Within their maintenance and capital-project management remit they had 347 trains, over 471 mi of track, 155 stations, 77 mi of deep tubes, and over 2000 points, crossings, and bridges.

In November 2006, Metronet were heavily criticised by the PPP arbiter, Chris Bolt, over their performance from 2003 to 2006. His analysis included criticism that Metronet had not performed in an economic or efficient manner, and had failed to follow good industry practice.

The remaining London Underground lines, (Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly) remained under a PPP arrangement with Tube Lines until May 2010 when it was announced that Transport for London would buy out the Tube Lines consortium.

Financial crisis
On 17 July 2007 it was reported that Metronet was "teetering on the brink of administration". The situation arose because it had received only £121m out of the £551m it needed to cover cost over-runs. By contrast, Tube Lines, the other PPP company, had brought in almost all of its works on time and on budget.

On 18 July 2007, the company went into administration. Alan Robert Bloom, Roy Bailey, Margaret Elizabeth Mills and Stephen John Harris were appointed special PPP administrators. It was subsequently bailed out by the UK Government at a cost of £2 billion. On 27 May 2008, Metronet came out of administration and was transferred to Transport for London and more recently London Underground.

On 3 December 2009, Metronet Rail became part of London Underground. This was welcomed by many Metronet employees, however the question remains to what happens to Tube Lines and whether Tube maintenance contracts should be run by private or public companies after the Metronet experiment with private investment ended an expensive failure.

In 2010 the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee reprimanded the Department for Transport for its failure to heed National Audit Office warnings about the company's management.