Rail cuts to cause disruption to Stamford and Rutland commuters, trade unions say
A Trades Union Congress report says Network Rail cuts are a big concern
Those in Stamford and Rutland who commute via train to work are being warned that cuts might have a big impact on the rail sector.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) report says Network Rail's plans to axe £100m in expenditure will risk 2,500 jobs - equating to almost 70,000 hours worth of safety checks.
The report says those lost hours would amount to greater delays due to less track maintenance, fewer trains running and even increase the risk of serious rail train crashes.
But Brian Maddison, an ex-railway boss from Peterborough, thinks there's more of a plan in place to avoid that kind of damage to the sector:
'Trains may be slower, there may be fewer of them, things like that could well happen if the cuts go through as described. But I'm sure that it's not just cutting staff like that. There must be a plan as to what's actually going to be done to maintain a good railway', the former civil engineer said.
'It will have a massive detrimental effect on the railway, but I don't really think that's what Network Rail have in mind. If they are a good management team they'd have a plan that modernises in someway the way the railway is maintained.'
Safest major network in Europe
Mr Maddison agreed that if the cuts were to happen it would have a major impact on the industry, but it wouldn't necessarily have the same risk to safety that the TUC implied:
'Level of maintenance would go down, speed restrictions might have to be introduced on lines because they can't be maintained at the right speed. The railway is an intrinsically safe industry, so it wouldn't automatically equate to an unsafe railway, but it may equate to one that is working less well in order to keep it safe.'
In response to the Trades Union Congress report, a Network Rail Spokesperson said:
“The changes we have made to the railway over the last twenty years have only led to improvements in railway safety. Britain’s railway is the safest major network in Europe, and we’d never make changes that would compromise that hard won achievement.
“The modernisation ideas we’ve put on the table would help our workforce be more flexible enabling us to avoid compulsory job losses. The ideas would also help our workforce be safer because they won’t work on live tracks as often. So far we feel like we’ve been talking about our ideas, but the mic’s been off.”