Renumeration of TOC management
Dear Department for Transport,
Please can you provide the most recent top 10 salaries of management (and their positions) at the following directly managed train companies?
London North Eastern Railway
Northern Train
and Network Rail
Yours faithfully,
Jo Ronson
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your request for information which
has been allocated reference number P0021070.
A response will be issued to you in due course.
Regards,
Department for Transport
FOI Advice Team
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Dear Mr Kennedy / Ms Ronson,
Please find attached a response to your Freedom of Information request
along with the attendant documents.
Kind regards,
Steve Burton | Senior Correspondence Manager, Department for Transport
2/14 |
Post to: Great Minster Hse, 33 Horseferry Rd, London, SW1P 4DR
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WhatDoTheyKnow left an annotation ()
On 31 May 2022, WhatDoTheyKnow received a request from Northern Trains Limited (NTL), asking us to cease publishing the job titles and salaries of the top ten earners at the company. The salary data had been released by the Department for Transport in response to this request.
Having carefully considered our position, and having responded formally to all the correspondence we have received to date, we are continuing to publish the material.
We thought this was a notable request, as NTL, which operates under the “Northern” brand, is wholly owned by the Department for Transport. The situation we had was that a company owned by the Government was unhappy with what the Government had released in response to a Freedom of Information request, and was demanding the response be removed from public view.
The request for removal was not only made on behalf of the company, but also was represented as being a request on behalf of the “director group”, which we have interpreted to mean those senior staff at the company whose salary data has been disclosed.
As we understand it, the Department for Transport has dealt with the FOI request in-line with current best practice for transparency surrounding senior officials and high earners in the public sector, and has acted in accordance with current guidance from the Information Commissioner.
As part of our assessment of the material, we have considered the journalistic value of the data released. In this case, we noted the release occurred while threats of strike action on the railways were mounting. Indeed, the RMT announced, on 7 June 2022: “Over 50,000 railway workers will walkout as part of 3 days of national strike action later this month, in the biggest dispute on the network since 1989.” Northern Rail is among the rail companies expected to be affected.
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-launch-3...
We expect the senior staff salaries, and the attempt to keep those salaries hidden from the public, may well be considered especially newsworthy during this period.
The material indicates that the company’s Managing Director is in receipt of a salary of between £245,001 and £250,000 a year. We do not know if this is the full extent of their remuneration or if they receive other benefits in addition to their salary.
We thank Northern Rail for drawing our attention to this release, which might otherwise have gone largely unnoticed.
For more information on how we deal with takedown requests like this, and our legal basis for processing personal information see:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/priv...