The proposed Europe-wide computerised safety system for high-speed trains will not be fully in place in the UK for another 30 years, said the plan submitted to the EU last week.

The rollout of the £3.7bn European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) will take until 2038 to complete, with main lines only starting to get the technology from 2025, according to the Department for Transport (DfT) schedule.

Installing basic ERTMS by 2010 was recommended by the Uff-Cullen inquiry into the 1999 Ladbroke Grove rail crash, but the implementation date was pushed back to 2015 as part of plans to upgrade the programme.

Now the timeline has been put back by another decade.

“Rolling stock will be fitted early next decade. The earliest both rolling stock and infrastructure will be fitted on any single line will be 2025,” said a DfT spokesman.

Network Rail, which is implementing the project, will consider the results of next year’s trial on the Cambrian Line in Wales, where traditional signals will be replaced by onboard computers.

ERTMS is already up and running on dedicated lines on the continent. However, the government said the UK will benefit from following the trend.

“Risks are being taken by others and we will learn from European research,” said the DfT spokesman. “No country has installed the technology across their entire network, but there are several high-speed lines with it in Spain, for example.”

ERTMS relies on the rollout of GSM-Railway, a secure voice and data communication system. But GSM-R has also been repeatedly delayed. The service was initially due by 2008, but budget constraints delayed it first to 2010 and then to 2013.

Notwithstanding the slow progress, the phased approach to ERTMS is sensible, according to independent rail expert Christian Wolmar.

“ERTMS is enormous – it is a method of saving costs and boosting the capacity of the railways and they need to be 100 per cent sure they are doing it right.”