Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many lawyers are employed by Network Rail to work on delay attribution issues with the staff of train operating companies.
Answered by Claire Perry
Network Rail have no lawyers employed to deal with this topic, they may become involved in larger and more contentious delay attribution disputes but time commitment will vary significantly.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many lawyers are employed by Network Rail to deal with contractual interface issues.
Answered by Claire Perry
Network Rail has 26 lawyers in the company. None are employed full time to deal specifically with these types of contractual interface issues. Those in the Routes Legal Team (c 12 lawyers) will spend a percentage of their time on these issues and to a lesser extent those in the Corporate Legal Team (c 3 lawyers).Input from the team will vary considerably depending on the nature and size of the issue that has arisen.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many staff are employed by Network Rail to deal with delay attribution issues with train operating staff.
Answered by Claire Perry
167 staff at Network Rail have responsibilities in train delay attribution, representing around 0.5% of Network Rail’s total staff. This number of staff dealing with train delay attribution has remained fairly constant over recent years. Network Rail is a company of c. 35,000 staff operating a network that transports 1.66bn passengers a year, and being able to accurately measure how its work impacts on train performance is essential to maintaining and improving a high standard of service.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what consultants have been used to advise the Government on the future structure of Network Rail; and what the cost to the public purse has been of engaging such consultants.
Answered by Claire Perry
Since Network Rail’s reclassification to the public sector in 2014, the Department has engaged EY (previously known as Ernst & Young) to support the development of policy on the future of rail infrastructure management. The final cost of this work was £750k.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much it cost to reconstruct the railway at Dawlish; and from which budget that cost was met.
Answered by Claire Perry
£35m was spent repairing the most damaged section of the track and sea wall and associated works during the initial 56-day work period at Dawlish. Work to raise the walkway is additional and has an anticipated final cost of £15.3m. Funding came in two phases: Phase 1 emergency work was funded primarily from insurance with the Network Rail structures renewals budget paying the excess of £2m. Phase 2 (raising the walkway) will be funded through Network Rail’s Control Period 5 (2019-24) structure renewals budget.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many staff are employed by Network Rail to deal with contractual interface issues.
Answered by Claire Perry
Network Rail has 68 positions based across its eight routes with various responsibilities for managing commercial and regulated relationships with industry customers (the various operators). These roles are important in ensuring effective partnerships between Network Rail and the wider industry in order to meet the needs of passengers.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much was spent on road maintenance in Stoke-on-Trent local authority area in the last financial year.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The Department for Transport allocated funding of just under £4 million to Stoke on Trent City Council for local highways maintenance in the last financial year, 2014/15. This includes £1.3 million per annum towards a 25 year street lighting PFI project that commenced in 2003/04.
Local authorities are also able to use revenue funding, allocated by the Department of Communities and Local Government through the Revenue Support Grant for maintaining their local highways.
Neither revenue nor capital highways maintenance block funding is ring-fenced and it is for local highway authorities, such as Stoke on Trent City Council, to decide upon their spending priorities across the whole range of services that they provide.
Asked by: Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much vehicle excise duty was collected in Stoke-on-Trent local authority area in 2014-15.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The Department does not hold data on VED receipts directly attributed to local authority areas.