Christopher Jago interviewed by Mike Hodson

Oral history interview with Christopher Jago, conducted and recorded by Mike Hodson at the interviewee's home in East Sussex on 19 June 2018. Duration: 56 min. 13 sec. Early career; Network SouthEast (NSE); Railtrack; Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL); privatisation briefing; proposed structure seen as overly complex; Director of Restructuring; new structure placed excessive demands on engineer staffing; Hatfield accident; Network SouthEast restructuring process; post-privatisation issues; re-branding during privatisation; performance regimes; no incentive for train operating companies (TOCs) to mitigate delay; setting up Railtrack South; benefits of privatisation; NSE budget constraints; Railtrack transition into private ownership; effects of privatisation; Railtrack in Administration; shareholders; CTRL; summary of privatisation

One of over 150 oral history recordings made as part of the Britain’s Railways All Change (BRAC) archive project. BRAC was set-up to cover gaps in documenting the railway privatisation process in the United Kingdom, between 1994 and 1997, when the government-owned British Rail was dismantled into over 100 privately-owned companies. The interviews capture the recollections of people involved in the planning and implementation of the privatisation process, the management of change and running the railway during privatisation.