The government have confirmed that the rail-network HS2 will not be completed in its current schedule and funding will be delayed beyond 2033.
The news comes after Mark Wild, chief executive of HS2, wrote a letter to transport secretary Heidi Alexander warning there was ‘no reasonable way to deliver’ on the 2033 target for the first trains to be up and running between London and Birmingham.
Wild said that costs remain ‘unsustainable’ and suggested that the government would have to crack down on contractors and renegotiate the engineering contracts awarded in 2020 or costs would skyrocket.
What’s more, he outlined that future timelines were way off, claiming the testing phase will take three years rather than the 14 months it has currently been allocated.
Taking in the news, Alexander has informed the House of Commons that Mike Brown will be taking over as HS2 Ltd chair and work alongside CEO Mark Wild. She has also reassured that the route between Birmingham and London will be completed, though cancelled sections will not be reinstated.
Alexander said: ‘This must be a line in the sand. This government is delivering HS2 from Birmingham to London after years of mismanagement, flawed reporting and ineffective oversight.
‘Mark Wild and Mike Brown were part of the team, with me, that turned Crossrail into the Elizabeth Line – we have done it before, we will do it again.
‘Passengers and taxpayers deserve new railways the country can be proud of, and the work to get HS2 back on track is firmly underway.’
Following the news, infrastructure industry veteran James Stewart conducted a review into what went wrong with the project and ruled ‘cost overruns on the main works civil contracts are by far the most significant contributors to the overall cost increases.’
The report likewise said that political decision-making had been a big factor in cost and then delay, with HS2 not having a ‘buffer’ from government, making it ‘subject to evolving political aims, which pushed forward on the schedule before there was sufficient design maturity and caused progressive removals of scope.’
Going forward, Alexander has claimed: ‘It will be a number of months before I am in a position to confirm with any certainty the schedule and estimated final costs.’
Though Wild’s assessment appears to suggest that HS2’s opening, even on a reduced scale, will be pushed back for at least two more years.
Photo by Jake Weirick via UnSplash
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