Rail infrastructure company Network Rail (NR) announced much-improved annual results yesterday but remains firmly in the red.

The company made a pre-tax loss of £164m in the 12 months to the end of March.

This was an improvement on the previous year, when the successor to Railtrack made a pre-tax loss of £1.07bn.

NR also made an operating profit of £407m in the past year, compared with an operating loss of £758m the previous year.

The company's net debt increased from £12.6bn to £15.6bn, well below the expected figure of £17.2bn.