Network Rail to spend £60m on preventing landslip disruption

Major flooding near Rotherham

Network Rail will spend £60m on improving the network in Yorkshire and the North East to prevent disruption from landslips and heavy rain.

"Major drainage schemes" will be built in Rotherham, Goole, Immingham and Horsforth, a company spokesperson said.

Network Rail said there had been 35 landslips in the north of England in the last year.

The spokesperson said landslips "can often be dangerous as well as expensive and time consuming to resolve".

Forty new drainage areas will also be built on the Yorkshire and the North East route, which serves 178 stations including Leeds, Sheffield and Hull.

'Improve reliability and resilience'

Over the next five years, £2.1bn will be spent on the day-to-day running of the railway and a "widespread programme of renewals and upgrades on the network, improving the experience of passengers", the spokesperson added.

Network Rail's North and East route director Jason Hamilton said: "Climate change is an ever-increasing problem for our aging infrastructure, but we are proactively working to tackle the issue and improve the reliability and resilience of our network.

"We will also be carrying out major improvements to track, switches and crossings - the equipment used for trains to cross from one track to another - signals, level crossings, and more to improve train performance and increase reliability for passengers."