David Higgins is already making his mark at Network Rail in an attempt to cut costs. Network Rail today announced that it will not be paying an annual bonus to its executive directors in respect of the financial year 2010-11.
Steve Russell, chairman of Network Rail’s remuneration committee said:
“Last year, the board suspended the management incentive framework for executive directors and after a comprehensive review, will shortly be proposing to members a radically different approach to incentivisation from 2011/12 onwards, including transitional arrangements from extant long term incentive plans to the new scheme.
“There remained only the question of the basis on which any 2010-11 annual bonus should be awarded. In a decision reached jointly by the remuneration committee and the executive directors, no consideration will be given to any such annual award mechanism and thus no payments will be made. All recognise that the public expect consistently high network reliability and overall service delivery within a strong safety culture before the top leadership of the company should become eligible for payment under any annual incentive scheme.
“We intend to retain the past arrangements for the annual incentive scheme across all other employee grades for 2010/11 based on challenging targets that were established at the beginning of the year.”
