On May 20, 2021, the “root and branch” review of Great Britain’s railway industry was published in the form of a white paper.
The DNA of this document can be traced back to the review prompted by the 2018 UK rail timetable predicament, and there was extensive speculation regarding its publication prior to the general election in December 2019. Much has since changed, and the extent of the re-editing has been formally acknowledged by the renaming of the review from the “Williams Review” to the “Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.”