Crisis talks over planned rail strike action to resume Sunday

Talks aimed at averting strike action by rail workers in a dispute over pay have been adjourned until Sunday.

Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union members are set to hold a 24-hour strike from 17:00 BST on 4 June and a 48-hour strike from 17:00 BST on 9 June.

On Thursday the union rejected a fresh pay offer by Network Rail.

Both sides had met again on Saturday with conciliation service Acas to try to resolve the issue.

The workers, including signallers and maintenance staff, are also planning to ban overtime from 6-12 June.

Saturday's talks followed earlier discussions on Friday.

Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT, had said in a message to members on Friday: "Your negotiating team was invited to further discussions at Acas on the Network Rail dispute at short notice this afternoon."

He said the union's full team would be in London on Saturday to take the negotiations forward.

"RMT is fully committed to achieving a negotiated settlement and will be available in London for discussions for the whole weekend and beyond in order to achieve a settlement."

The RMT's 16,000 members at Network Rail work across the company's operations and maintenance departments.

A planned strike over last week's bank holiday was suspended after Network Rail tabled a revised pay offer to workers.

Network Rail originally offered a four-year deal of a single £500 payment followed by three years of rises in line with RPI inflation.

But the revised offer was for two years, with a 1% rise this year, and a rise of about 1.4% next year. It was also established that there would be no compulsory redundancies for the duration of the agreement.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has previously said he considered strike action "unnecessary and unreasonable".