Taxpayers left to foot £3m fine on rail firm over crash disaster

The rail infrastructure firm said it was “truly sorry” for the disaster after pleading guilty at St Albans Crown Court to breaching health and safety regulations which led to a high-speed train derailing at a faulty set of points.

Its predecessor Railtrack was in charge at the time of the crash, but Network Rail has shouldered the responsibility.

Sentencing Network Rail yesterday, Judge Andrew Bright said the train crash just outside Potters Bar station on May 10, 2002, was a “catastrophic accident”. He said the lives of the bereaved families had been devastated and that Railtrack’s procedures and standards were “seriously inadequate”.

But as Network Rail is a not-for-dividend company with no shareholders, any fine would have to be paid from what the judge said was “an income which is substantially derived from public funds”.

One of the passengers who died in the crash was Austen Kark, whose daughter Perdita said: “It’s offensive that I pay a fine for something that killed my father.”

Ms Kark, whose mother, author Nina Bawden, now 86, was badly injured in the crash, added: “Directors of the two companies should have been in the dock as individuals and they should have paid out of their own purses.”

Train drivers’ union ASLEF said it was “ludicrous that managers responsible for rail safety walked away unscathed while the public picks up a £3m bill”.

Network Rail said it accepted the fine “as we accept the liabilities inherited from Railtrack”, and added: “We say again today that we are truly sorry.”

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), which brought the case against Network Rail under the Health and Safety at Work Act, admitted that while safety on the railways had improved, the industry still had “significant work to do”.

Relative Pat Smith, 63, whose mother Agnes Quinlivan, 80, was killed by falling debris as she walked close to Potters Bar station, said: “I just hope that other families in the future are not treated as shabbily as we were by the rail companies, and I include Network Rail in that.”

The York-based maintenance firm Jarvis , which was responsible for the section of track at Potters Bar, but is now in administration, also faced charges, but the ORR decided in March not to proceed as the prosecution was “no longer in the public interest”.

Six passengers on the West Anglia Great Northern express service from London to King’s Lynn – Mr Kark, Emma Knights, Jonael Schickler, Alexander Ogunwusi, Chia Hsin Lin and Chia Chin Wu – were killed. They were in the train’s fourth carriage, which became airborne after derailing and ended up getting wedged under the canopy of the station.

Network Rail admitted failings over the installation, maintenance and inspection of adjustable stretcher bars which keep a moveable section of a track at the correct width for train wheels.

Judge Bright said Railtrack had had no specific guidelines for installing, maintaining and inspecting the kind of points that failed at Potters Bar. Serious faults with the points “could and should have been identified sooner”, he added.

According to the judge, the company’s failures put the travelling public and train crews at the risk of serious injury.

The judge said there were individuals who bore responsibility for the maintenance failures, and added: “I do not doubt that those who lost loved ones in the crash might have hoped to see those individuals held to account for their failure.

“However, they are not before the court and it’s Network Rail Infrastructure who fall to be sentenced for an offence committed by Railtrack plc.”

He added that, although Network Rail was making progress on 10 points of concern which were raised during last year’s inquest, the ORR considered that none of them had yet been fully implemented.

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