ATKINS, the largest engineering consultancy in the UK, may have announced an increase of 31 per cent in pre-tax profit to £73.6 million, but its York subsidiaries could not boast the same success.

Atkins Rail, of Holgate Road, and its sister company, Faithful & Gould, in Kings Court, between them employ 100 people to service multi-million Network Rail contracts to renew rail infrastructure, but suffered this year from a general slowdown in the rail industry

However, Atkins bosses believe that the demand will soon be so big that up to 25 more jobs will be needed in York over the next five years.

Richard Hall, an Atkins executive director and managing director of Faithful & Gould, said: "We had a bit of a turn down in the rail business. It's a surprise in terms of the amount the industry has to spend, with Network Rail being given £22 billion to improve rail infrastructure over the next ten years.

"The slowdown was primarily due to General Election uncertainty and assessments by Network Rail as to where to spend the money."

The rail regulator has been critical of Network Rail for not spending as much of the money as it might have this year, but the not-for-profit infrastructure organisation has argued that it needed to carefully target the cash.

Mr Hall predicted that for the next year the number of orders would remain fairly static but, from then on, he expected to win a number of rail orders which would see up to 25 per cent growth in recruitment at the two York companies.

He said Atkins Rail in York was, after all, a "centre of excellence" and home to a major engineering consultancy operation.

The group is already providing York-based rail company GNER with project management and planning supervisor services on its project to revamp stations on the East Coast Main Line, including York and Doncaster.

Talking about the group results, Mr Hall described them as "tremendous". He said: "With ongoing investment in the recruitment of high-calibre staff I see no reason why this growth trend should not continue into the future."

Updated: 11:16 Thursday, June 23, 2005