'Extra £500m' to boost Tube power

LONDON commuters and taxpayers face having to pay up to an extra £500m to help finance promised Underground improvements because an existing electricity supply deal will leave new Tube trains short of power.

Engineers estimate they will need 30% more power over the next seven years to meet the improvements scheduled under the public-private partnership.

The extra power requirement, however, will mean the renegotiation of a £700m Private Finance Initiative deal the Underground has with EdF's Seeboard Energy, and the final estimate could be as high as £1.2bn.

This would mean Transport for London, funded mainly by fares and Government grant, having to pay an extra £500m.

Jay Walder, TfL managing director of finance, said: 'New rolling stock requires additional power, that's just the way it works.' He added that 'it became apparent' the existing power supply would prove 'inadequate' once the new trains come into place from the end of the current decade.

Walder said that as a 'practical matter, what this means is that we have to negotiate a variation to the PFI contract which has been providing power'.

He warned: 'The cost of that work is likely to be very, very expensive. Our estimate of the total cost of the power work may well exceed £1bn - I think we have an estimate of £1.2bn in here right now and that is the result of an obligation we have assumed.'

LU managing director Tim O'Toole said: 'We have to amend the deal to deliver additional power for the PPP. This is not a minor amendment - it is a big assignment.'

He added that LU is under pressure to complete the deal by next year in order to have the power in place before new trains come on track in 2009.

The decision by the Government to provide energy through a PFI contract was criticised after the summer power cut revealed there was no back-up supply, and the latest Tube power problems are again under attack from opposition leaders.

Roger Evans, Tory transport spokesman for the London Assembly, said it was 'unacceptable that Londoners should have to pay for this monumental mistake'.