£2.25m in bonuses for Network Rail directors approved at annual meeting
Heavily-criticised six-figure bonuses for Network Rail (NR) bosses were approved at the company's annual meeting today despite rail union calls for a "no" vote.
But although 37 of NR's "members", who effectively act as shareholders for the not-for-dividend company, voted in favour of the bonuses, as many as 31 voted against, with nine abstaining.
The performance-related bonuses, which amounted, in total, to £2.25 million for top directors, included £641,000 for chief executive Iain Coucher, who is on a salary of £613,000.
Before the bonuses were announced last month, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond wrote to NR urging restraint, while the Office of Rail Regulation said NR's 2009/10 performance had been mixed.
One member at today's meeting in Manchester said the announcement of the bonuses had done NR "significant reputational damage".
But NR chairman Rick Haythornthwaite said the NR remuneration committee, the body responsible for deciding bonuses, had taken the company's reputation into account when agreeing the awards.
And remuneration committee chairman Steve Russell told the meeting that "considerable progress" had been made by the company in 2009/10.
Mr Coucher has property in Scotland and, before today's meeting, members of the rail union TSSA donned Highland gear and, to the sound of bagpipes, staged a noisy and colourful anti-bonus protest outside the annual meeting venue in Manchester.
Gerry Doherty, leader of the TSSA rail union, said after the vote: "The public members have inflicted a moral defeat on Iain Coucher and his cronies with fewer than half of them actually voting in favour of these outrageous bonuses.
"Unfortunately these people have no concept of public morality or service. Their snouts are so deep in the trough that they treat the taxpayer and passenger with complete contempt."
