John Armitt, the chief executive, will receive a bonus of £270,000, taking his total earnings for the year to £755,000.

Iain Coucher, his deputy, will get £240,000 on top of his salary of £433,000. Two other executive directors will receive bonuses of £180,000 each.

The rail infrastructure company more than doubled the bonuses that the four men received last year after saying that they had exceeded all their targets for punctuality, financial performance and the condition of the network.

But Network Rail had admitted last month that its punctuality target was too weak. Punctuality has improved slightly in the past 12 months to 83.8 per cent of trains on time, but Railtrack achieved 90 per cent in 1998. Under Network Rail’s improvement programme, 90 per cent punctuality will not be restored until 2009.

Network Rail’s remuneration committee, which sets the bonuses, chose to ignore a request from the rail regulator to take into account the company’s failure to give sufficient warning of engineering works.

Millions of passengers have had to buy more expensive tickets because Network Rail’s delay in issuing emergency timetables has prevented train companies from selling discounted fares in advance. The regulator wrote to the committee in March pointing out that the company was “seriously in breach” of its operating licence and that this must be taken into account when deciding on the level of bonus. But the committee decided to award bonuses worth 55.6 per cent of the directors ’ salaries, just below the maximum permitted of 60 per cent. Last year they received 24 per cent.

Ian McAllister, Network Rail’s chairman, said that the bonuses were modest compared with those awarded by other large companies.

“In the past year train delays have been reduced by 17 per cent, significant efficiency savings have been made and the condition of the railway assets has improved markedly,” he said. “I would rather have the problem of people telling me the bonuses are too high than to have missed the targets.”

He said that Network Rail had also improved safety, with broken rails, signals passed at danger and train accidents all at their lowest level.

The company measures its punctuality performance by the number of minutes of delay it causes to trains. The total fell by 2.3 million minutes last year but was still at 11.4 million minutes, well above Railtrack’s record of 9.1 million.

Railtrack predicted in 2002 that it would cut delays to eight million minutes a year by 2006. Even after setting a tougher target, Network Rail is aiming only to reduce delays to 10.6 million minutes in the 12 months to next March.

Gerry Doherty, the general- secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, challenged Network Rail’s claim that it had exceeded targets for financial efficiency.He said that the company had underspent its signalling renewals budget by about £1 billion, leading to significant redundancies at AEA Technology and other suppliers which depend on the work. “In such circumstances, it’s staggering that some of the executive directors will receive bonus payments in excess of £260,000. It’s little wonder that these guys are considered ‘fat’ controllers,” he said.

While the directors and senior managers will receive bonuses based on a percentage of their salaries, the remaining 27,300 staff will receive a fixed sum of £1,112.

PUNCTUALITY

• In Railtrack’s best year (1997-98), 89.7 per cent of trains were on time
  
  
• In the 12 months to the end of March, Network Rail achieved 83.6 per cent punctuality, up from 81.2 per cent the previous year
  
  
• The company is aiming for 85.5 per cent this year and 90 per cent by 2009

  Do Network Rail bosses deserve their bonuses?
  debate@thetimes.co.uk
  

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