YORK-based rail company Jarvis has joined with Railtrack and the Strategic Rail Authority to agree a £12 million compensation package for Potters Bar rail crash victims - even though no blame has yet been allocated for the disaster.

A spokesman for Railtrack, which is putting up the money, said it had decided that the families of those who died in the crash and those who were injured had suffered enough distress and it was time to help them.

He stressed that the compensation announcement would not be an admission of liability, and that the £12 million figure was "a guesstimate".

He said: "It is a figure based on our past experience. Nothing final has been decided yet."

The spokesman denied that the agreement was a ploy by the three rail companies to deflect criticism away from any one single body.

He said: "It is not that at all. We have no indication from those carrying out investigations into the cause of the accident when their conclusions will be made known, so with that in mind we thought it was the right thing to do."

Families of the seven people who died in the crash are expected to receive up to £1 million each, according to weekend reports, with the remainder of the £12 million distributed among the 67 who were injured.

But Louise Christian, a solicitor acting for families of people killed and injured in the crash, said the package was "meaningless".

She said: "If it's not high enough, we're still going to have to go to court. The compensation is very important to the victims, but it's not the whole of the story. They need to know that the root causes are going to be determined and action is going to be taken to prevent it happening again."

No one from Jarvis or the SRA was available for comment.

Updated: 11:56 Monday, August 12, 2002