Government silence over missing £65 million of rail access funding

Both the government and Network Rail have refused to say what will happen to £65 million of funding that was allocated to improving access at rail stations over the last five years, but was never spent.

Disability News Service (DNS) revealed last week that Network Rail had apologised after admitting that the £65 million was not spent in the railway system’s last five-year “control period”, which ended in April.

Network Rail – which owns, repairs and develops the railway infrastructure in England, Scotland and Wales – had originally delayed releasing the figures until after the general election, claiming this was due to “the complexity and volume of the information requested”.

The figures, released in response to a freedom of information request, show that the Department for Transport (DfT) allocated £350 million for 2019-2024 for the Access for All programme, but only £285 million was spent over those five years.

Access for All was launched by the last Labour government in 2006, and funds access improvements at stations across Britain.

Last week, DfT left it to Network Rail to comment on the Access for All figures.

Disability News Service (DNS) approached DfT on Monday morning to ask it to clarify what would happen to the unspent money, and for a guarantee that the funding would now not be lost.

But despite repeated attempts at securing a response from the department, it refused to answer those questions or produce a statement about the missing £65 million.

Instead, it insisted – as background information – that it was committed to improving access to the rail network and would eventually provide updates on the Access for All programme.

Last week, Network Rail said it had “experienced challenges with some of the more complex improvements, which means some schemes have taken longer than planned, and we were not able to spend all of the funding in the last five years”.

But this week, Network Rail has refused to clarify what will happen to the missing £65 million.

Instead, a Network Rail spokesperson said in a statement: “We are carrying out a comprehensive review into our accessibility schemes with the Department for Transport so we can better deliver for our passengers.

“We are so sorry for the delays and we know the impact this has had on people.

“We are working as hard as we can to get them back on track, using funding from the government’s Access for All pot and Network Rail’s existing budgets.”

In 2022, a report by the government’s advisers on accessible transport, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, concluded: “At current annual rates of investment spend on station accessibility, it will take around 100 years to make the entirety of the station estate step-free to new-build standards.”

Also in 2022, rail operators told a research organisation that only “major” government funding would solve the accessibility problems at stations across the country.

Picture by Office of Rail and Road

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