Annual Report and Accounts 2011: Safety

No Messin’!

We continue to engage with local communities regarding safety, primarily in ‘hotspots’ where there is the greatest incidence of trespass.  No Messin’!, our award winning campaign, targets the highest offending age group (9-17 years) in the 100 worst offending locations.

The Samaritans

Our groundbreaking five year partnership with the Samaritans aims to reduce suicides on the railway by 20 per cent by 2015.  We’ve trained over 900 frontline railway industry staff to help them manage potential incidents.

Level crossings

We have closed 227 level crossings since 2010 and have agreements in place to close over 200 more.

Safety on the railway is everyone’s responsibility, with Network Rail and our managers directly accountable. We will not compromise on safety, it remains our number one consideration in everything we do.

Train performance was badly affected by the severe weather during November and December 2010. However better planning and rephasing of work resulted in less disruption of the rail network.

Half way through the five-year Control Period 4 we continue to reduce running costs and remain on target to achieve the challenging efficiency savings that we first set out as part of our CP4 Delivery Plan in 2009.

As we create a new devolved regional structure, we are empowering our people to work more directly with our train and freight operating customers, delivering a seven day railway at the same time as a huge capital upgrade and renewals programme.

We will continue to deliver our commitments under Control Period 4 enabling more trains to run on the network, improving punctuality further and making the railway safer.  At the same time we will find ways of doing business better, faster and at a lower cost to meet the demands of CP5.