§ Mr. Lofthouseasked the Secretary of State for Transport what change in costs has occurred to date from the transfer of the design and supervision of construction of trunk roads and motorways from the local authority-based road construction units to private consultants.
§ Mrs. ChalkerThe costs of transferring RCU work to consultants are as follows:
- 1. Payment to local authorities in respect of early closure of the sub-units, which will probably amount to about £9 million. Some of these costs would almost certainly have had to be incurred at a later stage as the need for design work reduced in some of the sub-units.
- 2. Payments to consultants for familiarisation with partly prepared chemes—£1 million.
The changing pattern of work within the road programme means that it is not possible to make a comparison between actual expenditure on consultants' fees and the costs which might have been incurred if it had been possible to continue the RCU organisation for longer, if the need for change in the organisation had been met in some other way.