Media centre

Monday 10 Aug 2015

Network Rail responds to ORR performance fine

Region & Route:

National

| Southern

Phil Hufton, managing director of network operations at Network Rail, said: “At the start of this year we had a number of problems that caused passengers disruption and frustration and we apologise for this.  Since then we have proactively invested over £11m to improve performance for Southern and Thameslink passengers.

"This investment, which has seen the introduction of a revised timetable, improved equipment, the deployment of rapid-response maintenance teams at London Bridge as well as new information screens and better passenger information, is paying dividends and passenger service reliability has now improved by almost 12% since January.

“While the nuts and bolts of our infrastructure are the most reliable they’ve even been, severe congestion caused by record numbers of trains and passengers makes delivering a consistently reliable service a daily challenge for ourselves and the train operators. At London Bridge we are undertaking the biggest and most complex station and track redevelopment ever attempted on Britain’s railways – while simultaneously continuing to keep services running."

“As we are now a public sector organisation, the fine must come from within our existing budget and will mean a reallocation of existing resources to pay it.”

The £11m investment has seen:

• revised timetables created and published
• working with operators Southern and Thameslink to change operating procedures at the station and improve the flow of passenger information
• new information screens at London Bridge
• creating dedicated teams of maintenance staff to concentrate on infrastructure around the key London Bridge area
• installation of more remote-monitoring equipment for our infrastructure
• further improvements to the Brighton Main Line