Unite, Britain's biggest union, has called on Network Rail's Chairman, Rick Haythornthwaite to claw back part of the bonuses paid to directors following claims that the company has been under-reporting accidents amongst workers for at least two years.

Seven directors earned £2.36 million in bonuses last year. A Unite investigation claims that Network Rail had been under-reporting minor accidents amongst workers. Network Rail's safety record is taken into consideration when the remuneration committee awards bonuses. According to Network Rail's 2009/10 annual report, "safety is one of the key discretionary items for assessment for the committee when it comes to consideration of payments under the incentive plan".

Backing Unite's claims, industry regulator, the Office for Rail Regulation (ORR) has described Network Rail's reporting of Riddor (Reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations) incidents as "obscure and wrong".

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Network Rail had also put in place management league tables where managers would have points deducted for Riddor incidents. Unite believes the league tables acted as an incentive for managers to under-report accidents. Network Rail has now agreed to review the use of the league tables but is refusing to re-open the issue of bonuses paid to directors.

Unite's National Officer Bob Rixham said: "It's outrageous that senior directors can walk away with huge bonuses when Network Rail wrongly boosted its safety record. Network Rail's chairman must ensure that part of the bonuses paid to directors are recouped.

"Unite believes that Network Rail's remuneration committee was not informed that the ORR alerted the operator of the under-reporting of accidents before they awarded huge bonus payments.

"Behind the statistics are real people who have been injured at work, it's scandalous that Network Rail has been underplaying these incidents. The directors should be held to account because these practices go all the way to the top.”

The ORR has confirmed that there had been a pattern of reporting accidents within Network Rail that were simply not credible, with the ratio of major to minor accidents at Network Rail being 1:1.12 compared with the industry template of 1:30.

The ORR had gone further by confirming that Network Rail had been promoting an obscure interpretation of the Riddor rules i.e. if three days after an accident a worker could perform "light duties" then they deemed the accident as non-reportable".

(CD/KMcA)