Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they first received notification from Network Rail that the costs of some projected enhancement and electrification schemes were likely to exceed the amounts listed as available to them in the budget for Control Period 5.

By spring 2014, as Network Rail began to develop designs for its enhancements to a greater level of maturity, it identified increases in cost forecasts on some of the major electrification schemes and discussed these forecasts with the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).　Very few of the schemes had passed through the ORR’s regulatory process to ascertain their efficient price by this point in time, so the forecasts remained indicative.

In light of this emerging picture, last summer Secretary of State for Transport asked Network Rail as a matter of urgency to provide an update on forecast costs across the whole programme, working with the ORR and DfT officials.