The National Audit Office (NAO), which scrutinises public spending for Parliament, has today (Tuesday 23 July) released its report on HS2 and value for money.
The report details that billions of pounds and significant benefits of the project have been wasted by the cancellation of its Northern leg. It details how the cancellation of half the project has made its purposes unclear, wasted significant resources, and impacted plans for greater capacity on the nation’s railways.
The decision to scrap Phase 2 will cost £100 million and could take three years to shut down sites where work has begun. The report also states that the previous Conservative government had spent £592 million buying up land and property along now-cancelled parts of the route.
Commenting on the report, Railway Industry Association (RIA) Chief Executive Darren Caplan, said: “The Railway Industry Association has consistently argued in the past that to get the full benefits of HS2 investment you ultimately need to build the full scheme. With large parts of the planned HS2 scheme scrapped, the problems of a lack of current and future capacity on the UK’s north-south railway corridors remains.
“The West Coast Main Line (WCML) transport corridor is clearly a vital artery for UK economic growth, carrying millions of rail passengers and tonnes of freight. Today’s NAO report is a stark reminder that the current position of no new significant capacity to ease congestion on this rail corridor is simply untenable. Ministers in the new Labour Government now need to ensure it has all the powers and approvals required to facilitate rail growth north of Birmingham – without which Birmingham risks becoming a terminal, rather than the national hub it should be.
“The Government needs to set out a plan for how more capacity can be provided north of Birmingham, given, as the report points out, WCML will be full by the mid-2030s. This work is particularly urgent to prevent bottlenecks in the future with the UK population set to increase by 10% until the mid-2030s and, according to the recent RIA-commissioned Steer report, passenger numbers set to grow between 37% and 97% to 2050.
“The report also highlights the need for the Government to urgently provide a coherent plan for HS2 connectivity to Euston station. Delivering the route into central London – without delay – is crucial to avoid changing HS2 from what is supposed to be a strategic piece of national infrastructure into an Acton to Aston line. So getting the right station design at Euston is the next urgent step if we are to get value from all the investment already made.”
A spokesperson from the High Speed Rail Group commented: “This National Audit Office (NAO) report makes clear the plan the incoming Labour government is inheriting – a truncated HS2, and a West Coast Main Line operating at capacity – is not going to help grow the national economy, nor is it going to allow train performance on the West Coast to return to acceptable levels.
“A line which fails to reach central London, and which worsens the bottleneck north of Birmingham is an inheritance that needs amendment.
“High speed rail is essential to increasing capacity across our transport networks. Yet this report shows that current plans would cause the West Coast Main Line to be full up within a decade. What’s needed is extra capacity, not new bottlenecks.
“Most of the suggested alternatives to delivering phase 2a – the link between the West Midlands and Crewe – will take longer to implement, and add risk and uncertainty, which are the enemies of efficient major project delivery. And no plan can be considered final until the line reaches Euston.
“Done properly, high speed rail can stimulate growth in our regional economies. Sadly, as this NAO report demonstrates, the current plan falls far short of this objective.”
The full report can be viewed here.
Image credit: HS2 Ltd
