Rail Infrastructure Resilience: Storms and Floods

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the resilience of rail infrastructure against future storms and floods.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, my department’s climate adaptation strategy for transport embraces detailed work on the railway infrastructure by Network Rail. That organisation has produced weather resilience and climate change adaptation plans by railway region, looking out not only over the five-year control period to 2029 but further into the 2030s. Those plans identify priority sites for maintenance, renewal and enhancement. Beyond 2029, work programmes will be firmed up and funded in future control periods.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that Answer and to know how much work Network Rail is doing to mitigate the effect of global warming. But when we look at the south-west, we see most of it cut off for several days—weeks, occasionally—not just by high tides, which are going to get higher, but by river floods. We may get a situation where the whole railway between, say, Newton Abbot and Exeter is closed and not repairable, so is it not time to start a formal study into the viability of inland routes and how they could be developed? That would give people who live in the south-west some comfort that the long-term resilience of the whole rail network down there is being looked at and preserved.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

As an engineer, my noble friend will know that Brunel built the railway around the south Devon coast in 1846 and that it has been under attack by the tides and weather ever since. The most serious closure was of nearly 60 days in 2014, and that was remedied by a large-scale investment project that spent £165 million. That resulted in a railway that was sufficiently resilient to remain closed for only 36 hours earlier this year, despite terrible weather.

The citizens of Devon and Cornwall can be quite comfortable that the future resilience of the railway is being looked after. The alternative route, which stopped operation some 60 years ago, in fact closed temporarily for a much longer period due to the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the south-west. It would not be a sufficiently resilient route, even if it could be afforded to be rebuilt.