Todmorden station accessibility upgrade: safety and delivery lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Todmorden station’s £multi-million Access for All upgrade in West Yorkshire has been taken back in-house by Network Rail after contractor Input Group was “stood down for unsafe behaviours”, transport minister Huw Merriman told MPs. The scheme, funded through the DfT’s Access for All programme, is expected to deliver step-free access via new lifts and improved footbridge links between platforms on the Calder Valley line. Network Rail will now re-let or self-deliver remaining works, with renewed scrutiny on site safety management and rail-adjacent construction controls.
Technical Brief
- Direct client control will tighten permit-to-work, possession planning and safe system of work approvals.
- Safety investigation outcomes are likely to trigger revised RAMS and additional site supervision requirements.
- Any future re-letting will embed stricter competence checks and behavioural safety criteria in pre-qualification.
- Programme risk increases around rail possessions and temporary access arrangements while delivery model is reset.
- Cost exposure may rise due to demobilisation, remobilisation and potential redesign of temporary works.
Our Take
Network Rail appears frequently in our UK Infrastructure coverage, and safety-related contractor issues like this one at Todmorden tend to trigger tighter client-side supervision and more prescriptive method statements on subsequent West Yorkshire and northern England station schemes.
Across the 741 Infrastructure stories in our database, safety-tagged pieces involving contractor removal usually lead to short-term programme disruption but rarely to full scheme cancellation, suggesting the Department for Transport is likely to prioritise continuity of accessibility delivery even if procurement has to be re-run.
For smaller contractors such as Input Group, being stood down on a safety basis in a high-visibility rail environment can materially affect prequalification prospects on other DfT-backed projects, as repeat clients increasingly use past safety performance as a hard screening criterion rather than a soft scoring factor.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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