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RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2014 :: RMTnews 5 R MT has called for a halt to planned cuts to Network Rail budgets and staffing levels after the regulator, the Office of Rail Regulation, backed RMT’s case that the cuts are hitting passenger services. The ORR, which also sets the Network Rail budget, said that “underspends” [ie cuts] on maintenance work, deferred plans to renew infrastructure, and other factors including engineering works overruns are leading to severe delays for both passenger and freight services. The union said that a programme of investment and recruitment was clearly required in maintenance and renewals. ORR’s analysis of rail performance highlights that more than half of delays on the network are caused by problems attributed to Network Rail cuts that the ORR themselves have imposed. The ORR report revealed that “between April and October this year, there were more than nearly 16,000 infrastructure incidents across the network, nearly five per cent more than over the same period last year, despite benign weather conditions, causing almost 1.7 million minutes of delay to trains nationally”. This extraordinary report not only supports everything RMT has been saying about the impact on rail services of cuts to maintenance and renewals but which also blows the lid off the role that the ORR themselves play in imposing cuts, on behalf of the government, on Network Rail. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the report made it clear that major delays to services were bound up with Network Rail’s deferral of works for parts of the rail network such as tracks, level crossings and electrification. “That is a shocking indictment on the state of Britain’s railways while the private train operators are creaming off a fortune, but worse is to come. “Only last month the ORR demanded a further £1.7 billion of cuts from Network Rail from 2014, cuts which would hack back skeleton staffing levels and drag back maintenance and renewals even further than the dire conditions identified in today’s report. “ORR has got a nerve complaining about the impact of the cuts on one hand and then doling out another bunch with the other and this shambles has got to stop. “That means ending the profiteering of privatisation and reinvesting that hard cash siphoned off by the private companies back into capacity, staffing and infrastructure. “It also means ending the fragmentation and waste of “outsourcing” and sub- contracting and bringing all the works on our railways directly under the control of Network Rail,” he said. RAIL REGULATOR ADMITS MAINTENANCE CUTS HAMMERING SERVICES