Crossrail (Annual Update)

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

On Thursday 4 June 2015, the Prime Minister joined the Mayor of London and the Secretary of State for Transport at Farringdon to mark the end of Crossrail tunnelling. For almost three years, eight tunnel boring machines have been in operation seven days a week below the streets of London to construct the 42 km of new rail tunnels.

Excavation of the Crossrail tunnels has also now been completed, and with it comes the creation of Wallasea Island, a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature reserve in Essex. A total of 1,528 shipments delivered 3 million tonnes of excavated material from the Crossrail tunnels to create the nature reserve.

In the past year we have made great progress in many different areas of the project. The project is now over 65% complete with work well under way on planning for and delivering an operational railway.

Major surface works being delivered by Network Rail on the existing rail network continue apace with a number of key milestones reached. The first section of the Stockley flyover has been completed; a new signalling system between Reading and the Heathrow Junction has been implemented; in south-east London the first mile of new Crossrail track has been installed and the existing station at Abbey Wood demolished; and improvement works are well under way at a number of surface stations.

In July 2014, Transport for London announced that it had awarded the contract to operate future Crossrail services to MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Ltd (MTR). MTR is expected to employ around 1,100 staff with up to 850 new posts. This will include almost 400 drivers and over 50 apprenticeships for people from communities along the route. MTR have now taken over the operation of services between Liverpool Street and Shenfield on behalf of TfL Rail in readiness for the introduction of the new Crossrail trains supplied by Bombardier from May 2017.

In November 2014, together with the Mayor of London, we announced that all 40 future Crossrail stations will be step free, dramatically improving accessibility provision along the route. All newly built Crossrail stations will have marked routes together with simple signage and information, and the Crossrail fleet will be built by Bombardier to the latest accessibility standards.

In January of this year we marked the appointment of the 400th apprentice on the project, beating the original target of 400 apprentices over the lifetime of the project. Crossrail has now appointed 460 apprentices. Alongside this, 3,886 jobs have been created by contractors for local and/or previously unemployed people on the project. Crossrail’s tunnelling and underground construction academy has had over 10,000 enrolments on courses since opening in 2012; and over 12,000 people are currently working across 45 Crossrail construction sites.

The Crossrail board continues to forecast that the costs of constructing Crossrail will be within the agreed funding limits. We expect Crossrail to cost no more than £14.5 billion—excluding rolling stock costs.

During the passage of the Crossrail Bill through Parliament, a commitment was given that a statement would be published at least every 12 months until the completion of the construction of Crossrail, setting out information about the project’s funding and finances.

In line with this commitment, this statement comes within 12 months of the last one which was published on 3 July 2014. The relevant information is attached.

The numbers above are drawn from Crossrail Ltd’s books of account and have been prepared on a consistent basis with the update provided last year. The figure for expenditure incurred includes moneys already paid out in relevant periods, including committed land and property expenditure where this has not yet been paid. It does not include future expenditure on construction contracts that have been awarded.

Attachments can be viewed online at:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions- answers-statements/written- statement/Commons/2015-07-02/HCWS80/.

[HCWS80]