UK: Network Rail pleads guilty over Potters Bar crash

[John Ashworth]

Potters Bar crash: Network Rail pleads guilty

Solicitor dismisses criminal proceedings as 'charade' saying fines would be paid by the taxpayer

* Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 19.37 GMT

Network Rail faces a fine of more than £100,000 after the owner of Britain's tracks and stations admitted health and safety breaches in a criminal trial over the 2002 Potters Bar train crash, which killed seven people.

A legal representative of families bereaved in the tragedy dismissed the proceedings as a "charade" because any financial penalty will be paid by taxpayers.

Network Rail told Watford magistrates' court it will plead guilty to track safety failings that caused the derailment of a London to King's Lynn service outside Potters Bar station, Hertfordshire, on 10 May 2002. Six passengers on the West Anglia Great Northern train – Austen Kark, Emma Knights, Jonael Schickler, Alexander Ogunwusi, Chia Hsin Lin and Chia Chin Wu – were killed in the accident. Passerby Agnes Quinlivan died after she was hit by falling debris.

Louise Christian, a solicitor who represented Potters Bar families at the inquest into the deaths, said: "These criminal proceedings are a bit of a charade. They deliver no accountability. The only person paying the fine is the taxpayer." Network Rail's main funding is an annual state grant of nearly £4bn. Christian added: "It could be a substantial fine but you need to ask what the point is."

Perdita Kark, whose father Austen was killed and mother, the novellist Nina Bawden, seriously injured when faulty points derailed the train, said a fine would be a token gesture. The fatal Grayrigg crash, on Network Rail's watch in 2007, showed track safety remained a concern. "It is quite clear that they have still not addressed some of the major issues with how people are trained, how they are checked," she said.

Last year a coroner warned at the Potters Bar inquest that passengers still face risks to their safety on the railways.

Network Rail, which inherited liability for the crash from its privately-owned predecessor, Railtrack, said the safety record had improved significantly since it replaced Railtrack. "We have indicated a guilty plea today as Network Rail took on all of Railtrack's obligations, responsibilities and liabilities when it took over the company in October 2002, some five months after the accident," a spokeswoman said. "The railway today is almost unrecognisable since the days of Railtrack and the Potters Bar tragedy of 2002."

The Office of Rail Regulation, which brought the criminal case, said it was considering whether to continue to pursue prosecutions against maintenance firm Jarvis, which slipped into administration last year. Jarvis was due in court on the same health and safety charge but was not represented when Network Rail entered its intended plea.

Network Rail will be sentenced at St Albans crown court next month for failings over the installation, maintenance and inspection of stretcher bars, which hold rails apart at the correct width for train wheels. Sentencing guidelines state that a fatal breach of health and safety laws carries a minimum fine of £100,000. Recent ORR prosecutions have seen fines of up to £450,000 imposed on companies.