Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, (a) how much has been paid to officials of his Department as an additional incentive for working overtime on top of their normal overtime payments, (b) how much has been offered to any individual staff member for a one-off occurrence, (c) how many staff received such incentivised additional payments, (d) from which budgets such payments were made and (e) at which Ministerial or official level the business cases or payment approval for such payments was made in (i) each of the last five years and (ii) 2016 to date.

The Department for Transport, comprising the central Department and the Executive Agencies, has paid a total of £62,266 on out of hours working payments in addition standard overtime payments since January 2016. Since January 2016, 113 individuals have received an additional out-of-hours payment. No additional payments have been offered to individual members of staff for a one-off occurrence.

Arrangements for these out-of-hours payments were agreed by People Committee in the central Department and the appropriate Executive Boards in the Executive Agencies. Individual decisions on payments are taken by HR and the payments are funded from the Department’s salary budget.