One in seven members of staff, including a director, have left the Government’s flagship new infrastructure delivery body National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) in its first 15 months, it was recently revealed, while its Council of Expert advisors is still not in place.
NISTA Chief Executive Becky Wood told the House of Commons Treasury Committee that she had run a voluntary-exit scheme as part of NISTA’s formation by merging the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) and the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA) into one unit inside the Treasury, with a staff of around 220. Some 14% of employees had decided to go. She had spent “quite a bit of focus time on integrating lots of our people over the past 12 months... We are all collectively together in either London, Leeds or Birmingham,” she said.
But she admitted: “There is some work to do in relation to how we settle our organisational design. I have completed certain processes to appoint slightly different director roles… We have organised ourselves in a functional structure that seeks to bring together some brilliant talent from both organisations in a slightly different way. The intent being that the structure represents that thought of bringing strategy into delivery.”
Wood took up her role as Chief Executive in June last year. She joined from consultancy EY, having previously held senior roles at the DfT and IPA.
It has also emerged that NISTA is still to put in place its Council of Expert advisors, after the interim group ended their terms at the end of last year.
Julia Prescot, previously Deputy Chair of the NIC, was named as Chair in February for a five-year term with the council promised to follow.
“The interview process has been completed, and an announcement will be made in due course,” NISTA told LTT in April. Three months later, its spokesman now says: “The process is nearing completion. Advisers have been appointed, but we are awaiting their progress through the usual vetting and clearance process – an announcement will be made in due course.”
