Lilian Greenwood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lilian Greenwood on 2016-02-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many (a) consultants and (b) permanent staff are employed by Network Rail’s Infrastructure Projects division; and how much Network Rail has spent on consultants who work in its Infrastructure Projects division in (i) 2014-15 and (ii) 2015-16.

Claire Perry

I have requested this information from Network Rail and can confirm that the number of permanent staff in Infrastructure Projects in 2014-15 was 3641 and in 2015-2016 is 4309. During this period Network Rail insourced the High Output Team from Amey which increased permanent staff figures.

Network Rail Infrastructure Projects’ expenditure on companies that class themselves as providing consultancy in 2014-15 was £178,401k, and in 2015-2016 is £154,430k. The majority of expenditure on consultants occurs via Network Rail’s Principal Contractors and therefore is not included above.

We are not able to provide details of the number of consultants because the contract specification for each piece of work is based on the deliverable and not on the number of consultants working on it.