“It won’t happen again”, promises Network Rail after £80k fine

From: Safety & Health Practitioner
Network Rail has been fined £80,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £32,000 after a train hit a collapsed public footbridge and came off the rails, injuring the train driver and all the passengers on board.

Leicester Crown Court, sitting on 3 October, heard that on 1 February 2008, a lorry delivering bulk material in darkness at 6am to a Network-Rail construction site near Barrow upon Soar station struck a footbridge over the railway with its upraised tipper, causing the bridge to collapse and block the rail line. A short while later, a train travelling from Nottingham to Norwich at 65 mph crashed into the debris and derailed.

The six passengers on the train suffered shock and minor injuries, while the train driver had to be freed from his cab by emergency services and sustained bruising, cuts and cracked ribs.

An investigation by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) found that Network Rail had failed to properly plan, manage, and supervise deliveries of ballast to its worksite. In this instance, the lorry had been allowed to drive along the site with its tipper body not fully lowered after emptying its load.

Commenting on the case, Allan Spence, ORR’s deputy chief inspector of railways said: “Network Rail’s poor planning and management of the construction site at Barrow upon Soar station placed the public, passengers and railway staff in great danger.

“Given the circumstances, it is very fortunate that no one on the train was seriously injured and that no one was crossing the footbridge when it collapsed.

“It is essential that incidents such as this never happen again. Since the time of this accident, Network Rail has made significant progress, acting on our recommendations to improve safety at its construction sites.”

Network Rail was fined £40,000 on each count for breaching the Health & Safety at Work act 1974 by failing to ensure the safety of employees and non-employees. A third charge of breaching the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 by failing to effectively plan, organise and control preventive and protective measures, did not carry a fine.  Network Rail had previously pleaded guilty to all three charges at Loughborough Magistrates’ Court.

After the sentencing, a spokesperson for Network Rail said: “Network Rail accepts that it should have done more to have prevented this accident. We did carry out risk assessments at the time, but we did not foresee the possibility of a lorry driver leaving site and failing to lower his tipper for several hundred yards – this is what happened and we should have done more.
 
“We have changed the way we carry out such work since the accident and passengers can be confident it won’t happen again.”

Whistleblower silenced with £16,000 payout

From: Daily Mail

A Network Rail whistleblower was silenced minutes before an employment tribunal could hear her claims that safety records of several level crossings were falsified.

The Times reported that Maryanne Rosse, the former operations risk control co-ordinator for the company, received £16,000 in a deal banning public disclosure of her allegations.

In exchange for her silence, Ms Rosse’s agreement also guarantees her employment with the rail company for another year before she received a severance pay of £40,000.

In a witness statement submitted to Ms Rosse’s victimisation case at the London Central Employment Tribunal, it was alleged that the employee submitted a list to her superiors, claiming that in 2009 safety records for 13 level crossings in East Anglia were inaccurate.

The statement said that Ms Rosse claimed a crossing near Ipswich had been wrongly deemed as ‘compliant’ despite a close miss between a school bus and a high-speed train.

Ms Rosse flagged up her concerns, saying there was a great risk of such an incident happening again and there would be serious consequences if the company was aware of a near miss and had failed to act.

The known whistleblower claimed that Network Rail was ‘not comfortable’ with Ms Rosse being involved in an inquiry about the deaths of two teenage girls who did on Elsenham level crossing, in Essex, in 2005.

Olivia Bazlinton, 14, and Charlotte Thompson, 13,  were hit by a train as they walked across the tracks.

Ms Rosse gave evidence in a statement to the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) in March about the deaths, where she said she was the victim of ‘bullying’ behaviour which forced her to ‘keep quiet’ about her claims.

She said: ‘I believe that contrary to their statements my employer did not value or welcome my actions as a whistleblower and that as known as a whistleblower (sic) with trade union affiliates they were not comfortable with me being in my role with the Elsenham civil case or any re-investigations and that is why they behaved in the way they did towards me to bully me into leaving my post and keeping quiet,’ the Times reported.

Network Rail told The Times that they had found no evidence to support her claims that level crossing reports had been falsified.

They had held an internal investigation into the list of 13 level crossings and found some discrepancies and an employee lost their job,

The told The Times: ‘Ms Rosse is a valued employee who did the right thing in revealing shortcomings within her department.

‘As a result of her actions, significant changes and improvements have been made.’

In February the ORR announced it was investigating an unseen report by Network Rail about the health and safety of Elsenham level crossing.

A risk assessment report from 2002 recommended gates should be locked when a train approached, but the gates were still not locking automatically in 2005, when the schoolgirls were able to cross the tracks, Sky News reported.

The ORR are reviewing the previously-unseen document.

Rail bosses ‘ripped off customers’

From: The Morning Star

MPs attacked Network Rail bosses yesterday for running the publicly funded company as their private gravy train with “unacceptable” big bonuses and failing to meet targets.

The House of Commons public accounts committee branded previously NR executives’ bonuses as “simply unacceptable” given the company’s poor performance for the five years to 2008-09.

It argued that the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) should put a more robust system in place for monitoring Network Rail’s performance and the Department for Transport should review the ORR’s powers.

“The relationship between the organisations involved in reviewing NR’s efficiency ‘may be too cosy’,” the committee said.

Chairwoman Margaret Hodge MP also warned Network Rail against compromising safety by deferring maintenance work.

“We are not convinced that NR’s plans to defer about £1 billion of renewal work, such as to track and signalling, over five years will result in genuine efficiency savings.

“Safety must not be traded off against other outcomes.”

Rail union TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty said: “The ORR is a toothless watchdog which has failed passengers and allowed the directors of NR to run a publicly funded company as their own private gravy train.”

Sister union RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the committee confirmed the union’s concerns over the dangers of deferring and delaying safety-critical rail renewals

“However, it fails to address the main drag-weight on rail efficiency in this country and that is the greed and fragmentation of privatisation.

“It is the gold-plated, taxpayer-funded rip-off of privatisation that has left the UK’s railways 40 per cent less efficient and the only solution to that is public ownership.”