Network Rail has announced a five-year improvement plan aimed at delivering a railway that is better prepared to deal with the effects of climate change.

Over the next five years, Network Rail will invest £2.8bn in helping the railway better cope with extreme weather, including:

• Investment into looking after miles of drains, cuttings and embankments
• Recruiting 400 extra drainage engineers
• Key operational staff will attend a new ‘weather academy’
• More than 600,000 metres of drains will be built or rebuilt to help better cope with rainfall
• Turn attention to 20,000 cuttings and embankments with renewals and refurbishments
• Installing more ‘smart’ sensors’ to give early warnings of movement
• Installing CCTV at high risk sites to enable a faster response
• Introducing new technology to help keep services running, GUSTO will use topography to predict windspeeds to allow trains to run at higher speeds during stormy weather and precise real-time rainfall forecasting that will link with asset condition data for better management

Network Rail’s Control Period 7 will run until 31st March 2029 and in this time, they will spend £19.3bn on renewals, £12.6bn on maintenance, £5.3bn on support functions, £4.4bn on operations and £1.8bn on a ‘risk fund’.

Funding for the improvements will come from Government grants, totalling £29.8bn, track access charges from train operators totalling £13.8bn and commercial income totalling £1.7bn.

“Delivering a better railway for passengers and freight users is at the heart of our new five-year investment plan. Tackling climate change, safely improving train performance, adapting and responding to changing commuter habits whilst managing an ageing infrastructure requires the whole industry to rally for the benefits of all rail users.

“Whilst there are challenges and opportunities ahead, our mission is constant – we’re here to connect people and goods with where they need to be. The railway is part of the fabric of our everyday lives and has been for generations. It provides essential services to society, underpinning economic growth and our plans will support that over the next five years – a period that will mark the railway’s bi-centenary.”

“Climate change is the biggest challenge our railway faces. The extreme weather of the past year that has seen an unprecedented 14 named storms, has taken its toll on our railway – with experts predicting more of the same to come. We are responding to that challenge with a huge investment in making our railway more resilient and better performing for rail users during such events.

“We can never completely ‘weatherproof’ our railway, but we can be better prepared and mitigate the worst that Mother Nature throws at us, now, and into the future, to keep passengers and services safe and moving.”

“Train performance has been suffering and the industry must come together and make this, and tackling climate change, our main focus.

“Our role is to deliver a safe railway that people can rely on, whatever the weather, with trains that turn up and arrive at their destination on time, and where passengers have confidence they are in safe hands. This is what we must deliver daily and what we should, and will, be held to account for.”

Andrew Haines, chief executive