Metronet face penalty for Victoria line overrun

Metronet Rail BCV faces financial penalty after engineering work on the Victoria line of the London Underground overran.

Parts of the line had been suspended for works over the weekend, but the overrun caused unplanned loss of service for passengers first thing on Monday morning.

A Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said that the overrun had been caused by "poor planning, poor management and poor execution" on the part of Metronet. The company now faces abatements due under the terms of the PPP contract.

Metronet rejected the accusations of poor planning, blaming the delayed handover on an incident involving a passenger death on the line on Friday evening, which prevented them from gaining access to the site until 2.54pm on Saturday, nearly 13 hours later than scheduled.

A Metronet spokesperson stressed that the original plans for the weekend closure had been made well in advance in full co-operation with London Underground and said: "The sad incident of Friday night upset our meticulous plans and we were foceed to reschedule the work at very short notice. We are working to adapt our schedule to ensure the improvement of the Victoria line is completed to plan."

The weekend closure was the first of 16 scheduled to take place throughout the summer and TfL are now urgently seeking assurances that future work will be managed more effectively and handed back on time.