RAIB report into an incident at HSK released

From reading the report, it seems that this was actually a complex incident with lots of people involved and lots of possible things that needed investigating as potential causes, etc.

The report does comment that due to illness and holiday absence some of the interviews took place a considerable time after the event.

AIUI organisations directly involved with the incident, and/or to whom recommendations are addressed see the report ahead of publication and are given time to comment on the recommendations (I think I remember from a previous report, unrelated to LU, that one of the recommendations had been declined). As there were 13 recommendations made in this report, it may have been a while before all the various committees etc that need to digest, discuss and formulate a response had all met and done so.

All that said, yes it does seem an awfully long time to produce the report. I read all of the RAIB reports, and the average time between incident and publication is about 12 months. I don't know how far in advance of publication the organisations get to see the report*, but I have heard somewhere that an investigation takes 6-8 months, which seems quite a long while - especially if there is no metallurgical or other specialist examination needed (I don't know how reliable this figure is though).

*I heard an interview with someone directly involved with the Elsenham level crossing incident (I think it was the mother of one of the girls who was killed, but I'm not certain) who mentioned that she had read the RAIB report into level crossing safety that this event was the trigger for. This was about 2-4 weeks (iirc) before the report was published on the RAIB website.

Good Lord, what a %^$&*#&# mess!!

I certainly hope that the middle and senior management have taken this report as seriously as it deserves - it certainly doesn't inspire confidence.....