Britain’s rail network rests on sleepers and bearers, which are mostly made from concrete. A railway needs strong foundations to carry the massive forces imposed on it; a train full of passengers can weigh over 500 tonnes and travel at 125 miles per hour. But somewhere on the network there is at least one stretch of track on which the bearers may not have been properly tested. No one can be completely sure they are strong enough. And yet these potentially defective bearers were still laid. Our rail network remains one of the safest in the world, but sources who have spoken to the New Statesman in recent weeks say a culture has taken hold in which reputation and cost efficiency have taken precedence over safety. The solid foundations of Britain’s railways may not be as solid as we thought.
Nine people with experience of working for Network Rail or its suppliers, as engineers or health safety experts, have spoken to the New Statesman to express concerns over the safety culture on the railways, a culture they say has become more focused on cost and driven by political concerns over the past decade.
All said that they felt this culture proceeded from Network Rail, the public body that owns the tracks and hands out the contracts. The incidents described include a number of unsafe practices, but more worryingly they also include incidents in which people raising safety concerns have been told to keep quiet; in some cases, sources say, people who raised such concerns were sacked.
At the end of August, it was reported by Politico that the man who has chaired Network Rail for the past decade, Peter Hendy, had personally requested that “action” be taken against an engineer, Gareth Dennis. In April, Dennis had voiced concerns about the safety standards at Euston Station, London. Speaking to the Independent about the station’s capacity issues, he said: “It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s not just unpleasant, it’s unsafe.” In the wake of this story Hendy implied – via a letter and emails to Dennis’s employer, the engineering group Systra – that Dennis’s conduct might affect Systra’s ability to win future contracts. Hendy warned that the incident “reflects adversely on your likelihood of doing business with us or our supply chain”, which appears to imply that Hendy felt able to influence not only procurement by Network Rail, but also the wider economy of contractors that surround it.
Dennis was sacked by Systra on 8 July. The following day, Peter Hendy – also Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, a life peer in the House of Lords – became Britain’s rail minister.
Network Rail is a public body, owned by the Department for Transport. It runs about 20,000 miles of track, 2,500 stations and tens of thousands of bridges, tunnels, level crossings, signals and viaducts. It is also one of the biggest spenders of public money; in 2023 it spent £8.7bn with large engineering and energy companies. With this huge budget comes considerable power.
The more cynical engineers and track workers have another name for it: Not-Work Rail. “Any time you see someone in a Network Rail high-vis on site, they will never be dirty,” one told me. “It’s all the tier-one contractors and their subcontractors that get the jobs done.” But the engineer claimed that Network Rail employees would spring into action where reputational matters were concerned.
While installing walkways in a depot (managed by a train operating company), they became concerned about safety. Trains were moving in close proximity to where they were working. Part of the installation involved working “near enough underneath” a train that had its pantograph (the frame that connects the train to overhead power lines) raised. They were not shown any paperwork or other confirmation that the overheads, and the parts of the train close to them, were not carrying 25,000 volts. Curious, and somewhat concerned, the engineer asked on social media if such practices were safe; they say they were contacted by a Network Rail employee who, rather than answering their questions, told them to delete their posts.
Another engineer, who told me they had spent a long and “unblemished” career at Network Rail, said they had reported to managers that the safety protocols used to access tracks were not being followed. This concern they said was shared by other engineers at the time. Rather than addressing the issue, the engineer said Network Rail dismissed them on the pretext of a disciplinary complaint over something that had happened several years earlier.
A current Network Rail employee said they had seen more than one incident in which safety concerns were downplayed. This included an incident this year in which the employee questioned whether the safety measures used by a supplier were sufficient; they say they were told this was the supplier’s problem.
Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd completed 38,400 transactions last year with more than 1,300 suppliers of goods and services. One source was concerned by the conditions they discovered when they began working at one of these suppliers. Electrical cables trailed across the floor near powerful machines to which safety guards had not been attached. Industrial chemicals were left exposed on a site on which workers smoked wherever they liked. The fire alarm was a simple bell that a worker was supposed to ring, by hand, if something caught fire. The workplace subsequently received enforcement notices from the Health and Safety Executive and the local fire and rescue services, but the source who had reported these issues lost their job.
Another source, an engineer, said they too had raised raised safety concerns while working for a contractor. They were removed from the project they were working on, they said, at the request of a Network Rail project manager.
One engineer also told us that while they were working for a contractor they were made aware of an incident in which a train struck a “possession limit board” – a stop sign placed on a section of track to indicate that it is being worked on. They believed this incident to have been the fault of a Network Rail direct employee, but they said a subcontractor was blamed for the incident and lost a significant amount of work as a result.
This power over contracts is what Hendy appears to have alluded to in his letters and emails to Systra. Despite the relatively innocuous comments made by Dennis – who says he was only repeating an opinion that had already been expressed by the rail regulator – Hendy refused to accept an apology, and warned that if Dennis was not dealt with to his satisfaction, he would “take it up with your head office and shareholders”.
It should now be asked whether this is one example of the disproportionate response of an angry man, or – as our sources imply – a pattern that recurs throughout the industry. If other examples of such behaviour emerge there could be far-reaching implications.
Professor Christopher Bovis, a specialist in public sector procurement at Hull University, says procurement law does allow a supplier to be excluded, but the criteria are quite specific; an employee must have engaged in “serious professional misconduct”, a legal definition that requires them to have done something much more serious than speaking to a journalist (Dennis was fired for “gross misconduct”). Many contractors now want to know if the success or failure of their own tenders – which can cost a company millions – have been affected by such concerns.
We approached Network Rail and Hendy for comment on this article, in which we note the difficulty of responding to concerns that have, for obvious reasons, been carefully anonymised. In a statement, Martin Frobisher, Network Rail’s director of safety and engineering disagreed with the premise of this report. He said: “The New Statesman has flagged concerns which appear to be from a number of employees from the rail industry and its wider supply chain, but has refused to provide the detail to enable us to investigate and take any action needed. This is extremely disappointing and frustrating.
“We actively encourage anyone to raise any safety concerns via myriad confidential and independent reporting mechanisms and bodies – anonymity is guaranteed. That’s how we make our railway safer and how we are recognised as one of the safest railways in the world – by being open about our shortcomings and doing something about them. Telling anecdotes to journalists, which cannot be followed-up, is not the same as using the well-established, confidential channels in place.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Transport added: “The safety of our railways is an absolute priority for the Department and Network Rail. These are concerning claims, which the Department takes extremely seriously.
“We would urge anyone with concerns to come forward and report them through the established independent processes and services in place to ensure any issues are investigated and addressed swiftly and appropriately.”
However, the very fact that so many sources have appeared with “anecdotes” relating to safety culture on the railways suggests some may not feel comfortable raising concerns, even with the systems that are available.
This is an issue the new government’s green paper on employment rights addresses, stating: “Labour will use procurement to promote high standards. We will choose to do business with companies that treat their workers well”. Written in May, the document warned that under the Conservatives, millions of workers were “not protected from penalty if they raise health and safety concerns” and committed to new legislation to prevent employers “cutting corners on health and safety to increase margins”. As it prepares to impose such conditions on the private sector, it should take care to ensure public bodies are held to the same standard.
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