Large parts of the UK are expected to awake to severe weather conditions on Monday, with temperatures forecast to drop below freezing overnight and to as low as -10C in rural areas.
Although further significant snowfall is not expected in the coming days, the RAC is warning people to be prepared for icy conditions on the roads. The Met Office said the west of the UK was most likely to suffer from lingering patches of freezing fog.
Over the weekend travellers on the roads and railways faced testing conditions. The Office of Rail Regulation said it was launching an investigation after the biggest rail maintenance programme in years over-ran, forcing the cancellation of services at King’s Cross in London on Saturday.
Trains stopped prematurely at Finsbury Park a few miles north, and the far smaller station soon became overwhelmed by the crowds, leaving thousands of passengers queuing for hours in the cold.
The transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, demanded answers from rail bosses, and Sir Nicholas Soames, a senior Conservative backbencher, called for sackings at the rail operator Network Rail, claiming there had been a fundamental breakdown in the management and leadership of Britain’s railway industry.
Snow was cleared from roads in central and northern parts of England, and power was restored to 100,000 homes that had been cut off by the weather.
The first victim of the cold snap was identified as a pensioner from Bradford, who died on Boxing Day after he was struck by a car while trying to excavate his own vehicle from a snowdrift at the roadside. He was named locally as 75-year-old Graham Maloney.
After services at King’s Cross resumed on Sunday morning. Robin Gisby, a managing director at Network Rail, said: “I would like to sincerely apologise for the upset and upheaval passengers suffered yesterday as our engineers struggled to complete an essential improvement project that had been months in planning.
“We now move our focus to completing the handful of other projects still under way without further impact on passengers. We will also begin our investigation into what went wrong with the work at Holloway [north of King’s Cross] and the planning that went into this project.”
Soames, an MP for Mid Sussex, said he was horrified by the railway industry’s performance over Christmas. He said on LBC radio: “This is a problem for management and leadership – no other commercial organisation would set about this problem without a very clear idea of how they were going to do it, how long it would take, what it was they would use and what would be the finish time.
“They have failed on every single count and I understand that they even got the wrong piece of equipment to the line north of King’s Cross and then the replacement that was sent was wrong. Whoever ordered that needs to be dismissed from service immediately – that is just a fundamental breakdown of management and leadership.”
Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the rail union TSSA, urged rail bosses to refund affected passengers. “This is not the time for private rail firms to hide behind the usual byzantine rules covering refunds. They will be paid millions for these delays by Network Rail and they must ensure that their frustrated passengers do not end up with just pennies after the horrendous delays of the past few days,” he said.
On Sunday morning parts of the M62 near Liverpool were closed due to icy conditions, and the Peak District was under a blanket of up to five inches of snow. Pete Williams, an RAC spokesman, said drivers should be prepared for black ice on Monday, and advised them to carry a shovel, warm blanket and flask of coffee in the car on their morning commute.
