Crossrail boss says he will do without a bonus
Crossrail’s latest boss has promised that he will “do this job without a bonus” after his predecessors came under fire for receiving over £6.5m in extra payments over the last decade.
The payments were made despite Europe’s biggest infrastructure project being £3bn over budget and set to open nearly three years behind schedule.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, chief executives of Crossrail have received £8m in payment over the last 10 years, with bonuses totalling £2.1m.
Mark Wild, the project’s current chief, said that his predecessors “did not understand or have an estimate of the scale of the task.
“Particularly the task of completing the final bit of work. They just lost sight of where they were in terms of the volume of work to do”, he added.
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There are many people who think the bonuses should be paid back. Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee, which undertook a review of the project, said:
“It would be great to see them paid back. My horror is that there is no ability to claw them back.”
In December it was revealed that the central section of Crossrail may not be open before October 2021, despite claims it could be launched in the first quarter of that year.
Crossrail bosses announced in November it would not open before 2021, after the project was supposed to originally open in December 2018.