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Profits rise to over £1 billion at Network Rail

Network Rail has revealed profits of £1.35 billion in its most recent financial year, up from restated profits of £747 million the year before.

The rail infrastructure group said it invested almost £20 million a day in the year to the end of March 2014 - spending on new stations, platforms, lifts, information systems, concourses, footbridges and track.

Chief executive Mark Carne said the country was in the middle of a “rail rennaisance” as the number of people travelling by rail grew by 86 million.

It is anticipated that passenger numbers will grow by another 30% over the next ten years.

Despite the investment Network Rail fell short of its regulatory target on train punctuality. 90% of train services ran to time, 2.5 percentage points below the required proportion.

It blamed the missed target on rapid growth of passenger number and extreme weather conditions, as well as unreliability in assets.

Mr Carne said: “With a million more trains on the network than 10 years ago, there are inevitable challenges - we are determined to do more to improve train reliability in the face of these challenges.

“We will increase the reliability of the network and make it more resilient to climate change. Continued investment in our railway will also be key if we are to grow our economy and deliver a better, improving, expanding rail network for millions of daily users.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .