The launch of HS2 will be pushed beyond the deadline of 2033, the government has confirmed, but it didn’t specify when the high-speed railway line will become operational. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander stated on Wednesday that there was “no route” to completing the line on time and to budget, calling the HS2 project an “appalling mess”.
She explained a “litany of failure” meant missed deadlines and runaway costs which increased by £37bn between the approval of HS2 in 2012 and last year. It comes after the latest delay for the high-speed rail link, which has been reduced in size and postponed time and again.
Informing the delay in the House of Commons, Alexander told MPs: “It gives me no pleasure to deliver news like this. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash have been squandered through repeated scope changes, poor management and worthless contracts.”
She promised to update on costs and deadlines by the end of the year. There have been several Conservative governments overseeing the increasing cost of HS2. Shadow transport spokesman Gareth Bacon conceded that “mistakes were made in the delivery of HS2”.
He stated that “costs more than doubled” and “the project has been repeatedly delayed. Bacon stated that the 2023 changes announced under then prime minister Rishi Sunak were due to Conservative government failures with the scheme.
They included abandoning the proposal to construct the HS2 line between Manchester and Birmingham. Alexander stated that two reports on the project are meant to “draw a line in the sand” and signal a new start in how big infrastructure in the UK is delivered.
A preliminary report by Mark Wild, the newly appointed chief executive of HS2, “brings to the surface the appalling mismanagement of the project by past governments,” said Alexander.
She added: “Following his guidance, I can see no path by which trains can be operating by 2033 on schedule. Mr Wild’s interim report on the organisation he now heads concluded that there was “no single root cause” of increasing costs and delays at HS2 Ltd but an “accumulation” of factors over time.
He said that there was a “lack of timely intervention to address known challenges which set the conditions for the systemic failure we see today. Mr Wild admitted external pressures had caused problems, such as the pandemic, Brexit and the Russia-Ukraine war. But there were other more long-standing issues, he discovered.
HS2 construction began “too early” without secure designs, Mr Wild claimed, so costs and timing did not fully factor in risks. The organisation as a whole is “unbalanced” and “too large” in certain sections, for example, the corporate function, he added. There are also deficiencies in the workforce in specific individuals with commercial and technical expertise.
A second report by senior infrastructure delivery specialist James Stewart examined the governance and accountability of HS2 Ltd. It outlined what has been wrong with the project and what ministers can learn for future major projects.
Alexander also confirmed the appointment of Mike Brown, the ex-commissioner of Transport for London, as the new chair of HS2. Under the initial plans, HS2 was supposed to establish high-speed rail connections between London and big cities in the Midlands and North of England.
It was meant to reduce journey times and increase capacity on the rail network but has encountered numerous issues and skyrocketing costs since it was first mooted 16 years ago. The massive construction project was given the green light in 2012 and was expected to cost £33bn and to be open by 2026.
