Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the annual budget for communication and engagement has been for HS2 Ltd in each year since 2010.
As is necessary for a project of the nature and scale of HS2, communication and engagement activities are undertaken by teams throughout the HS2 Ltd organisation, supported by a central corporate affairs team. This wide range of engagement includes, for example, local information events for impacted residents to meet with engineers to discuss the proposals; awareness campaigns along the line of route to inform residents about the property compensation schemes and how they can access these; and mobile sound labs for communities near the route of Phase One to come and hear the likely noise levels from the operational railway.
As a result, it is not possible to provide annual budget figures as the amount of time spent on communication and engagement activity is not centrally tracked.