Rail delays worse than pre-Hatfield levels

Train punctuality rates remain worse than they were before the Hatfield disaster in 2000, Network Rail admitted today.

The not for profit company, which runs Britain's rail infrastructure, said services would not recover to pre-October 2000 levels until next August.

However, Network Rail said that in the past year it had cut delays by 16%, beating its punctuality targets. It announced that 83.5% of trains arrived within five minutes of their due time in 2004-05, ahead of Office of Rail Regulation targets of 82.8%.

Before the Hatfield crash, in which four people died after a high-speed train ran over a broken rail, 86.1% of trains had arrived on time.

Network Rail said delays were down from 13.7m minutes in 2003-04 to 11.5m minutes in 2004-05, the latter figure being equivalent to 21 years of delays. The company also said it had achieved ?420m of efficiency savings.

Today's announcement, which came as Network Rail outlined its 10-year business plan, means directors are likely to be in line for bonuses when its remuneration committee meets in May.

Network Rail has been criticised for cutting the number of trains on some routes - particularly busy commuter ones - in an attempt to improve punctuality figures.

"Network Rail is raising the bar on train punctuality," Ian McAllister, the company's chairman, said. "We've made substantial improvements in the last year, and now we want to go even further, even faster. That's why we are making the targets even tougher, ensuring passengers should see improvements in punctuality well ahead of schedule.

"The 2m-plus minutes we have taken off delays in the last year is a superb achievement - a testament to the efforts of our 30,000 employees and evidence of a much better working relationship with the train and freight operators."

Mr McAllister said the improvements had been achieved by taking maintenance in-house, introducing new integrated control centres and running an ongoing programme to improve the rail infrastructure.

By 2008-09, Network Rail plans to have reduced delays to 8.5m minutes, compared with the ORR target for that financial year of 9.1m minutes. The company also said it planned to spend ?20.5bn over the next four years, with 570 miles of new rail to be laid in the next 12 months.

John Armitt, the Network Rail chief executive, said the improved performance figures for 2004/05 would trigger bonuses. "The bonus scheme is for everyone, from signalmen and maintenance staff up to the management team," he said.

"Given the performance, we would hope that we will be able to pay bonuses. We are trying to deliver a better railway. Punctuality has improved although, whatever we do, there will always be someone, somewhere who will not be happy. All the time, we have to get consistency into the business."

Earlier this month, Chris Bolt, the ORR chief, wrote to the remuneration committee pointing out that Network Rail was in breach of its operating licence in failing to give enough notice of engineering, causing changes to the timetable.

Both last Christmas and before the Easter holiday, passengers experienced difficulty in obtaining cheaper, booked in advance tickets because of a lack of notice of timetable changes.