For scheme communications, community & site leads
A full-time post covers about one hour in five.
There is a number on the hoarding. It belongs to a scheme that runs plant at seven in the morning, closes a footpath on a Saturday, and occasionally wakes a street up at two. The question is never whether you need somebody good on community liaison — you do. The question is what answers the phone in the other four-fifths of the year. There are four honest answers to that, and this page sets out all four, including the ones we don't sell.
The arithmetic
Start with hours, not with money.
A UK full-time post of 37.5 hours a week, after 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday under the Working Time Regulations 1998, works about 1,740 hours in a year. A year is 8,760 hours. So one full-time community liaison officer, however good, is on duty for roughly 20% of the year — about one hour in five. Before any absence, any training day, any annual leave taken at the same time as a neighbouring scheme's noisiest week. That single figure is the whole reason this question exists, and it does not improve by hiring a better person.
It is worth being exact about what that 80% contains, because it is not dead time. It is every evening a resident gets home from work and finds a letter about a road closure. It is Saturday morning, when a scheme with a weekend permit is at its loudest and the office is shut. It is the small hours, when the only calls that come in are the ones that genuinely could not wait. The hours you are not covering are disproportionately the hours a caller is upset.
The other number on that row matters just as much. HS2 Ltd's Residents' Charter commits to a community helpline answered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, an acknowledgement within two working days and a response within a maximum of twenty. In February 2026 HS2 Ltd published its performance against it: of 1,067 complaints received between April and December 2025, 98% were resolved within twenty working days, and 100% of urgent construction-related enquiries and complaints were responded to within two working days. Those are HS2 Ltd's figures, not ours. They matter here because they are the clearest published UK standard, and a client's assurance team reads your liaison register against something.
The four options
What UK contractors actually do, and what each one really costs.
These are not four products competing for the same job. They solve different problems, and the most common expensive mistake is buying one to fix a gap the other leaves. Costs below are published UK market figures read in August 2026, with sources at the foot of the page. Check current prices before you build a budget on them.
1 · Another community liaison officer
The right answer to the relationship. A good CLO knows the street, knows which resident has a night-shift partner, and can knock on a door before a complaint becomes a petition. Nothing on this page replaces that, and we would not try to sell you something that claimed to.
- What it costs
- Published UK salaries for community and resident liaison officers in construction sat around £30,000–£40,000 in mid-2026. On top of salary an employer pays National Insurance at 15% above the £5,000 secondary threshold, and auto-enrolment pension at a 3% minimum on qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270, both 2026/27 rates. A £35,000 post therefore costs roughly £40,400 a year before recruitment, equipment, a phone, training or cover. Across the £30k–£40k band, roughly £34,500–£46,300.
- What it covers
- About 20% of the year, per the arithmetic above. Two posts on a standard week do not reach 40% — they overlap, because both work the same daytime hours unless you are paying for a shift pattern.
- Where it falls down
- Not on quality. On availability, and on the record: the register is only as complete as what somebody found time to write up afterwards.
2 · A duty mobile or out-of-hours rota
The most common answer on UK sites, and the cheapest. A phone goes home in somebody's pocket, usually a site manager's, sometimes rotated across a team with a standby allowance.
- What it costs
- Close to nothing in cash. The real price is paid in goodwill, and it is paid by the person holding the phone.
- What it covers
- In principle, everything. In practice, whatever gets answered — which on a Friday night is not all of it.
- Where it falls down
- It produces no record. A call taken in a car park at 9pm becomes an entry in the register only if somebody remembers it on Monday, and remembers it accurately. When an assurance review or a challenge asks what a resident actually said, "we dealt with it at the time" is not evidence. This is the option most likely to be already in place and least likely to survive scrutiny.
3 · A human telephone answering service
An established, entirely reasonable route, and for many businesses the right one. A trained operator picks up in your name and takes a message or follows a short script.
- What it costs
- Published UK guides in 2026 put typical spend at roughly £120–£400 a month for business use, with per-call charges commonly quoted around £0.99–£2.50 and per-minute rates around £0.30–£1.20, depending on volume and whether out-of-hours is included. Premium named-PA services run higher.
- What it covers
- As many hours as you buy, including 24/7 from most providers.
- Where it falls down
- Scheme knowledge. A general operator has no way to know your traffic management, your approved programme dates, or which complaint category your client's assurance team tracks — so the honest output is a message taken, passed on for somebody to deal with in the morning. On a scheme where the caller wants to know why the road is shut, a message is a second delay rather than an answer. That is a fit problem, not a quality one.
4 · A scheme-specific AI information line
This is the one we build, so read it with that in mind. A voice line trained on one named scheme: your approved public information, your programme, your traffic management, your escalation rules.
- What it costs
- Ours is from £2,500 to build and from £850 a month for the scheme, plus VAT, with £1.50 per call beyond 200 a month and £150 a month per additional language. That is roughly £12,700 in the first year and £10,200 a year after, against about £40,400 for a single mid-range post.
- What it covers
- Every hour, instantly, and it produces the record as a by-product rather than as homework: a timestamped entry per call with category, what was raised in the caller's words, what they were told and what was promised.
- Where it falls down
- It is not a person and does not pretend to be one — it says so plainly whenever anyone asks. It can only say what your team has approved, which means it is useless on the day something happens that nobody has written down yet. It does not knock on doors, read a room, or defuse an angry meeting. If your problem is that residents don't trust you, this will not fix it. Hire the CLO.
How to decide
Three questions that settle it faster than a comparison table.
Choose by the problem you actually have. If the gap is relationship, hire a liaison officer. If the gap is availability, buy hours — a rota or an answering service. If the gap is evidence, you need something that writes the register as it goes, because neither a pocket phone nor a message pad will produce one that survives review. Most schemes that get this wrong buy hours when what they were short of was evidence.
What happens to a call at 9pm on a Saturday right now?
If the honest answer is "it rings out" or "it goes to Dave's mobile", you already know which 80% you are exposed on. Ask Dave how many he took last month. He will not know, and that is the second finding.
If your client asked for the liaison register tomorrow, what would you hand them?
A complete, timestamped register, or a narrative assembled from memory and email? The gap between those two answers is the exposure, and it widens every week the scheme runs.
How long does the scheme have left to run?
Under a year and the arithmetic favours buying hours. Two or three years and a fixed build cost spread across the programme changes the comparison entirely — and so does the fact that the record has to hold together for the whole of it.
One more thing worth saying, because it is the honest version of our own pitch: the strongest set-up on a long scheme is usually a liaison officer and a line, not one or the other. The officer owns the relationships and the difficult conversations. The line owns the hours nobody is in the office, and it owns the register. Neither is doing the other's job, and a scheme that buys only the second one to save money on the first has misunderstood what it bought.
Asked straight, answered straight
Questions we get on this.
Do we legally have to have a 24-hour community line on a construction scheme?
There is no single statutory rule that requires one on every scheme in the UK. The obligation, where it exists, comes from your DCO requirements or planning conditions, your Construction Environmental Management Plan commitments and your client's contract. HS2 Ltd commits to a freephone helpline 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in its Residents' Charter, and that has become the reference point many assurance teams compare against. Check your own conditions rather than a benchmark.
How much does a community liaison officer cost in the UK?
Published UK salaries for community and resident liaison officers in construction sat around £30,000 to £40,000 in mid-2026. Adding employer National Insurance at 15% above the £5,000 secondary threshold and the 3% auto-enrolment pension minimum on qualifying earnings, a £35,000 post costs an employer roughly £40,400 a year before recruitment, equipment, training or cover for absence.
How many hours of the year does one full-time liaison officer actually cover?
About 20%. A 37.5-hour week over 46.4 working weeks — a year less the 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday required by the Working Time Regulations 1998 — is roughly 1,740 hours against 8,760 hours in a year. Two posts on standard daytime hours do not double the coverage, because they overlap rather than extend it.
Is a duty mobile enough for out-of-hours calls on a scheme?
It covers the hours if somebody answers, and it costs almost nothing, which is why it is the most common arrangement on UK sites. Its weakness is evidential rather than practical: a call taken away from a desk is only in the community liaison register if it is written up later, accurately. Where a scheme has to demonstrate how it engaged, a set of remembered conversations is materially weaker than a timestamped record.
What does a telephone answering service cost in the UK in 2026?
Published UK guides in 2026 put typical business spend at roughly £120 to £400 a month, with per-call charges commonly quoted around £0.99 to £2.50 and per-minute rates around £0.30 to £1.20, varying with volume and out-of-hours cover. Premium services with named receptionists sit above that range. Prices should be checked with the provider directly.
What is the difference between an answering service and a scheme information line?
An answering service takes a message in your name. A scheme information line answers the question. The difference is the knowledge behind it: approved scheme information, programme, traffic management and escalation rules for one named scheme, so a caller asking why a road is closed gets the answer rather than a callback. Both are legitimate; they solve different problems.
Does an AI community line tell callers that it is AI?
Yes, plainly, whenever anyone asks. There is no attempt to pass as a person. On a public-facing infrastructure channel that honesty is the point, and it explains why somebody picked up at 2am.
What does The Quiet Team's scheme community line cost?
From £2,500 to build and from £850 a month for the scheme, excluding VAT, with £1.50 per call above 200 calls a month and £150 a month for each additional language. Month to month. It is built around one named scheme rather than sold as a generic product.
Next
If your scheme has a number on the hoarding, we should talk about what happens to it at night.
Not a demo of a chatbot. A conversation about which of the four options above fits the scheme you are running, including the ones we don't sell. If the answer is that you need a liaison officer rather than a line, we will say so.
- Sources, read 18 August 2026. Prices and salaries move; check them before building a budget on them.
- Working time and holiday: Working Time Regulations 1998, 5.6 weeks' statutory annual leave.
- Employer National Insurance 15% above the £5,000 secondary threshold, and auto-enrolment employer minimum 3% on qualifying earnings £6,240–£50,270: 2026/27 rates.
- Community and resident liaison officer salaries: published UK job-market listings and salary aggregators, August 2026.
- Telephone answering service pricing: published UK provider and comparison guides, 2026.
- Complaint-handling benchmark and performance: HS2 Ltd Residents' Charter, and the HS2 Ltd Chair's response to the first independent report of the HS2 Residents' and Construction Commissioner, 26 February 2026, published on gov.uk. All such figures are HS2 Ltd's own and are never presented as The Quiet Team results.