Network Rail will take more specialists engineers in-house as a result of the holiday delays

Network Rail has blamed the new year’s engineering work delays on poor performance by overhead line workers.

The company said that delays at Rugby and Liverpool Street stations were caused by “poor productivity” of overhead line workers. Insufficient supervision and a lack of manpower over the holiday period were also given as reasons.

Consequently, Network Rail has announced taking more specialist engineers in-house, notably overhead line engineers. The company will oversee their workers nationally.

It will also ask contractors to rely less on agency staff, who presented 80% of the workforce employed at Rugby and Liverpool Street stations over new year’s.