Welcome to this dedicated page to help you understand the changes to the Network Rail Drugs and Alcohol standard (NR/L2/OHS/00120). The new standard was published on 3 September 2022, and all changes will be implemented by March 2023. This content is to help you understand the main principles and changes within the standard.

What’s changing?

Everyone can now be randomly tested for drugs and alcohol, not just safety critical colleagues. So please make sure you are familiar with the changes, and never attend work under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Please speak to your manager or contact our Employee Assistance Programme if you are concerned about drugs and alcohol misuse. The time to ask is now.

To view the key changes, click below: Change on a page

Managers: if you’re a manager, you’ll find information in our Manager’s content area’ on the right-hand pane of our MyConnect page (log-in required) to support you to brief your teams and if you need to support a colleague. Please promote this Safety Central page to colleagues who do not have a Network Rail log-in.

Site Contacts: if you are the designated Site Contact for your building, you’ll find the summary below useful: summary

Suppliers: if you are a supplier for Network Rail, please use this page to understand what it means for you.

Communications: if you’d like to communicate these changes, you can use our Communications Toolkit

Find out more

Review the materials on the right-hand side.
Consult our FAQ document
Email us at Health and Wellness.
or watch this recording of a briefing session

Our Drugs and Alcohol Support Programme (DASP)

We care about our colleagues and want to make sure that if you or a colleague need support, you know where to go.

DASP has been designed to offer support to Network Rail colleagues with mild to moderate drugs and/or alcohol misuse.

Once an employee has disclosed a concern with misuse to their manager or our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP – PAM Assist), and signed a declaration of commitment, they will be able to access:

occupational health support and advice with a physician
a 12-week course of specialist counselling, with a counsellor experienced in drug and alcohol misuse
voluntary active monitoring tests

For more information, please read this: summary

If you need detailed information, please read the full: DASP guidance

Further supporting documents can also be found on the right of this page.

Because safety is at the heart of everything we do.
Network Rail and our employees have a responsibility to ensure the safety of everybody in the workplace. This means the safety of colleagues, passengers, and the public. To make sure everyone is home safe, every day.

This responsibility also extends to our occupational health provision and EAP. Clinical professionals have a duty of care to inform us if they feel that somebody working for us is a safety risk to themselves, their colleagues, or the public – this includes where there is a significant risk of an individual being under the influence of drugs or alcohol at work, or, attending work with drugs or alcohol in their system.

If you have any queries or require further support, please contact the Occupational Health and Wellbeing team: Health and Wellness