04 April 2003
Neglect by the former Railtrack has landed its public interest successor with a soaring infrastructure bill.
Network Rail's business plan, published on March 31, showed that maintenance, operating and renewal costs will reach £6bn in 2003/04, compared with £4.9bn forecast in the last financial year.
Both figures are well above the £2.8bn originally budgeted. The business plan is likely to alarm the Strategic Rail Authority, which channels government subsidy into the system.
Network Rail said that a backlog of 4,000 miles of track repairs had developed, which could take ten years to clear. When rail was privatised in 1996, some 500 miles of track needed to be replaced every year to maintain a steady state. But British Rail was replacing 300 miles a year, and under Railtrack this fell to just 200.
Network Rail chair Ian McAllister said: 'Britain's rail network is suffering from a huge legacy of underinvestment. We have a fragile network that has been starved of a steady rate of renewals for many years, resulting in poor performing infrastructure that needs more maintenance to carry ever more traffic.'
He added: 'Network Rail is determined to turn this problem around, but the network simply needs large-scale investment to replace worn-out assets.'
Network Rail has also taken three more maintenance contracts in-house, representing 14% of mileage. It said this was to allow it to understand the maintenance process and control its costs.
The business plan says: 'After privatisation, fixed-price maintenance contracts gave the contractors control of inspection and maintenance, badly impairing Railtrack's view of the true condition of its assets and the action required to maintain them. This cannot be allowed to go on.' However, this move is sure to anger maintenance contractors who have done this work since privatisation and fear it will all be effectively renationalised, despite Network Rail's statements to the contrary.
The outlook seems bleak for the small rail enhancements sought by local authorities, with maintenance and the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line making such large demands.
Derek Bateman, chair of the councils' Passenger Transport Consortium, hoped to raise the matter with Transport Secretary Alistair Darling on April 3. 'It sounds like extremely bad news,' he said.
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