NETWORK RAIL COMMENTS ON HATFIELD TRIAL VERDICT

Tuesday 6 Sep 2005

NETWORK RAIL COMMENTS ON HATFIELD TRIAL VERDICT

Region & Route:: National

The Hatfield trial today, in which Network Rail and several of its employees faced charges under the Health & Safety at Work Act, concluded today. The court found: · Network Rail was guilty of offences under Health and Safety at Work Act · The four Network Rail employees who were individually charged of offences under Health and Safety at Work Act were all not guilty Network Rail’s Chairman, Ian McAllister said: “The Hatfield tragedy was a terrible event for everyone involved, and our thoughts today are with those who died and were injured on that day and their families. Once again, we wish to say we are sorry that it ever happened. This has been a long trial, it has now reached its conclusion and we respect the findings of the court. “It must be remembered that the maintenance of the railway has fundamentally changed since the Hatfield tragedy in October 2000. Since Network Rail took over the nation’s railway infrastructure some three years ago, maintenance has been taken in-house rather than being outsourced, and we have changed our approach from a ‘find and fix’ maintenance regime to one of ‘predict and prevent’. We have also invested heavily in new maintenance technology and doubled the size of our company to some 30,000 employees. “All these changes have been made as we work to minimise the chances of this ever happening again.” Network Rail is a very different company to Railtrack. In the three years that it has been in-charge of the nation’s railway infrastructure, it has made sweeping changes to its priorities, to the company structure, and to its people and processes:

Network Rail, is a not-for-dividend company, with engineering at its core
The running of a safe, reliable and efficient rail network are the company’s clear priorities

Maintenance has been brought in-house under direct control

As a result, maintenance has moved from a ‘find and fix’ approach to one of ‘predict and prevent’
We have embarked on a massive railway investment programme, spending over £5bn each year to operate, maintain and renew the rail infrastructure
We have invested heavily in new technology that measures the condition of the rail infrastructure in more detail and more accurately than ever before

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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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