Newly published figures show that delays in some areas fell by as much as 50%. Those areas where maintenance was first taken in-house performed outstandingly well, with delays in Wessex and the East Midlands down 50%, and in the Thames Valley by 36%.

Iain Coucher, Deputy Chief Executive, said: “Network Rail delays fell by almost 30% in July, making it ten straight months of sustained improvement. It’s the passenger and freight users who benefit from this improvement but there is still much more to be done.

“This continuing boost to train performance is the result of many changes we, and the train operators have made, including taking rail maintenance in-house. It’s attention to detail and hard daily graft by 30,000 dedicated employees, and those of our train operating colleagues, that made July’s progress possible.

“Passengers and freight customers rightly demand more. We are anything but complacent as we work with our industry partners to deliver a better performing railway each hour of every day.”

Some of the initiatives that are helping to improve daily punctuality include:

• Rolling out new integrated control centres where a ‘fat controller’ makes key decisions to ensure services run as smoothly and punctually as possible
• Working much more closely with train operators at a very local level to understand and tackle performance issues
• The creation of a seasonal taskforce to help us prepare for whatever Mother Nature has in store

Notes to editors:

1. July’s reduction in delay minutes means that around 84.5% of services ran on time

2. In July 2004 (period 4, ie. 27 June - 24 July) Network Rail caused train delay minutes were 851,470 compared to 1,183,082 in 2003, 1,039,877 in 2002 and 1,152,365 in 2001

3. Year to date performance (April to July ie. periods 1-4) is over 14% better than last year

4. These latest figures build on earlier improvements, including one million reduction in delay minutes in the twelve months to 31 March 2004

Network Rail is the 'not for dividend' operator of Britain's rail network. Our objective is to provide safe, reliable and efficient rail infrastructure.

We own and maintain the tracks, signals, tunnels, bridges, viaducts, and level crossings. We also own the network’s 2,500 stations, and manage the largest and the busiest. We provide access to the tracks for every passenger and freight train, timetable their journeys, and operate the signalling, which controls their movements.

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