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Press Office

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many people are employed in her Department's press office; and how many were employed on 2 May 1997. [108407]

Ms Hewitt: There are currently 26 staff employed in the DTI Press Office. On 2 May 1997 there were 24 staff employed.

Secondments

Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many individuals have been seconded to her Department from (a) the private sector, (b) NGOs and (c) other, in each case listing (i) from which organisation and (ii) dates of secondments, in each year since 1997–98. [108091]

Ms Hewitt: From records held centrally in my Department, the information requested has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many civil servants have been seconded from her Department to (a) the private sector, (b) NGOs and (c) other, broken down by (i) grade of civil servants seconded, (ii) location and (iii) dates of secondments, in each year since 1997–98. [108092]

Ms Hewitt: From records held centrally in my Department, the information requested has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

Street Works

Mr. Robathan: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make it her policy to undertake a full regulatory impact assessment on UK broadband development of the effects of proposed Department of Transport street works legislation before it is introduced to Parliament. [107807]

Mr. Jamieson: I have been asked to reply.

The Government intend to legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to allow more effective management of activities in the street, including those carried out by utility companies, to ensure that the disruption these cause is kept to a minimum. A regulatory impact assessment on the impact of these measures on relevant parties, notably local government and utility companies, including the telecommunications sector, will, of course, be made available to Parliament to accompany such a Bill when introduced. Among other things, this will need to deal with any impact on the development of broadband.

Websites

Mr. Yeo: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the (a) cost of and (b) number of visitors to each website operated by her Department and each agency and non-departmental public body for which her Department is responsible in each year since its establishment. [107632]

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Ms Hewitt [pursuant to the answer, 10 April 2003, Official Report, c. 395W]: Following is the information from the Chief Executives of the Agencies. A table containing information on Companies House will be placed in the Library.

Letter from Dr. J. W. Llewellyn to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:

The Secretary for Trade and Industry has asked me to reply on behalf of the National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) to your question on the (a) cost of and (b) number of visitors to each website operated by her Department and each agency and non-departmental public body for which her Department is responsible in each year since its establishment.

(a) The costs (including salary costs) associated with the website operated by NWML are:

2001–02: £28K

2002–03: £44K

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(b) During a one year period November 2001 to October 2002, the total number of visitors to the NWML website was 147,460.

Letter from Ms R. J. R. Anderson to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:

I am attaching a table giving details of annual cost of the Radiocommunications Agency (RA) website, and the number of hits for each year.

The RA website comprises the core website, which is managed in-house by RA staff, and also an Online Services section of the site, held on a separate server and managed by RA7s IT Partner, Radio Spectrum International (RSI). The online services section includes the Sitefinder mobile phone masts database and the Agency's e-licensing services.

The figures on the attached table refer only to the core RA website. They simply reflect the service provider costs and do not include staff costs. It is not possible, without incurring disproportionate cost, to include website costs for the Online Service of the site, as these costs are an integral part of the development of the Agency's ongoing e-business programme.

RA website (www.radio.gov.uk) costs and hits statistics 1997 to 2003

Year	Costs (not including RA staff costs)	Number of hits
1997 (August to December only)	Information not available	117,203
1998	Information not available	533,763
1999	£10,000 (CCTA hosting charge)	905,831
2000	£10,000 (CCTA hosting charge)	1,701,098
2001	£6,000 (OGC hosting charge)	2,000,176
2002	£11,394 (amount paid so far out of £26,000 2-year ISP contract with BT Group)	2,503,577

Letter from Kevin Woodrow to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:
I am replying to this parliamentary question, tabled on 3 April 2003, about the cost of the Patent Office's website and the number of visitors to the site. The information requested is shown in the following table:

		Website access statistics
Year	Cost (£000)(4)	Hits	Visitors(5)	Page Views
1997	97	1,154,934	30,183	11,758
1998	53	4,025,856	99,502	542,259
1999	115	8,176,657	168,701	1,892,535
2000	85	24,372,014	310,243	13,461,066
2001	85	97,188,047	1,165,900	31,558,590
2002	103	246,437,420	1,528,295	49,638,854

⁽⁴⁾ Costs do not include development of web based applications.

⁽⁵⁾ Visitors are unique visitors per month, added together to give an annual total.

Letter from Roger Heathcote to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:

You tabled a Parliamentary Question on 3 April 2003 to Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, asking if she will make a statement on (a) the cost of and (b) the number of visitors to each website operated by her Department and each agency and non-departmental public body for which her Department is responsible in each year since its establishment. I have been asked to reply in respect of the Employment Tribunals Service (ETS), which is an executive agency of the DTI, providing the administrative support for the Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Great Britain.

The ETS operates three web sites—one for the EAT, one for the Employment Tribunals and one for the agency itself.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal website has been operational since July 1999. The site was initially developed and hosted by the CCTA, but transferred to Hyperlink Interactive from April 2002, following the withdrawal of the CCTA hosting service. The table below shows the annual cost of the site and the number of visitors.

	Costs (£)	Visits	Ave/m
1999–2000	11,000	*	*
2000–01	7,500	*	*
2001–02	24,000	*	* (Transfer and migration costs)
2002–03	6,500	72,677	6,056

* There are no visitor statistics available prior to the transfer in April 2002

The Employment Tribunal and the ETS sites have been 'live' since September 2001 and visitor statistics are available from November 2001. The sites are not charged separately, so it is not possible to allocate costs to each site individually. The table below shows the annual cost of the sites and the number of visitors.

Year	Costs (£)	ETVisits	Ave/m	ETS Visits	Ave/m
2001–02	80,000	13,543	2,691	7,246	1,449
2002–03	55,500	116,822	9,735	30,688	2,557

The web site usage statistics are compiled on a monthly basis and include the number of 'unique visitors' per month. The figures given are the number of unique visitors per month totalled for the year so someone who visits the site only once per month would count as 12 visitors. A monthly 'average' (Ave/m) is also provided.

Letter from Desmond Flynn to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has asked me to reply to your question (2002/2047) asking or details of the cost of, and the number of visitors to The Insolvency Service's website since its establishment.

Information in connection with The Insolvency Service's website is only available for the 2002–03 financial year, following a change of Web-host provider in January 2002.

During 2002–03 The Service's website, at www.insolvency. gov.uk has received some 351,386 visits, of which there were 117,556 unique visitors. The total page views made by users during this period was 1,577,491 with an average user time of 6 minutes.

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The web-host provider charged The Insolvency Service £45,648 exclusive of VAT, for the web-service provided during this period. The website is designed and administered by Insolvency Service staff and other costs are therefore limited to staff training and various software packages.

Letter from Claire Clancy to Mr. Yeo, dated 10 April 2003:

I am responding to your recent Parliamentary Question on websites to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on behalf of Companies House, which is an Executive Agency of the DTI.

The cost of the Companies House website for the financial year 2002/2003 was £143,352 plus of an employee to manage and update as necessary.

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