Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress his Department has made on improving the resilience of the railway to Torbay and the South West.

Network Rail spent £40 million repairing and strengthening the line at Dawlish after the severe weather in 2014, and in order to try prevent the kind of damage to the railway that happened in 2014 from happening again, £31 million is also going into improving the resilience of the Great Western route.

Options for maintaining a resilient rail service to the Southwest Peninsula were presented by Network Rail to the Secretary of State in July 2014. The options will influence the next industry plan in 2016 and inform the Government’s rail investment strategy for 2019-2024.

Network Rail is progressing work on the existing rail route via Dawlish to ensure that future route failure is avoided.