Explainer
HS2: nine key numbers that illustrate the dilemma
over rail project’s future
The lowdown on costs, people involved in line’s
construction and time factor
Gwyn Topham
Transport correspondent
@GwynTopham
Tue 3 Oct
2023 18.22 BST
Rishi Sunak
is finally expected to make a decision on the future of HS2 before his speech
to the Tory party conference on Wednesday – with the second leg of the
high-speed rail network north of Birmingham, and potentially the final miles in
London from Old Oak Common to Euston, at risk.
The prime
minister has said he wants to tackle HS2’s “out-of-control” costs – but
billions of pounds already spent risk being wasted if the line is not
completed. So what are the big numbers that might sway his decision one way or
the other?
£100bn
The figure
– widely estimated as the total cost for producing the network – has never been
confirmed, nor even officially been in HS2’s budget. But it appears to have
been a threshold no minister ever wanted to hit.
The
Oakervee review of the project commissioned by Boris Johnson came at a moment
when costs were speculated to have hit £106bn, according to a top-end estimate
leaked from the draft report. That led to the pruning of the eastern leg
confirmed in the integrated rail plan, whose budget – including northern rail
schemes – was kept under the line at £96bn.
Now, the
official HS2 budget of £71bn at 2019 figures is due for restatement. According
to some long-term critics, notably Lord Berkeley and the surveyor Michael Byng,
the price is at least double that. HS2 dismiss their estimate. But rising
construction costs, plus the yet-to-be-factored-in bill for the eastern stump
to the east Midlands, would almost certainly break the £100bn barrier at 2023
prices – unless more is axed.
£24.7bn
The amount
already spent in total on HS2, at 2019 prices, including about £2.3bn in
preparatory works and land and property acquisitions for the second phases.
That money is divided fairly equally between phase 2a to Crewe, 2b to
Manchester and the not-quite-dead eastern leg, with the government still
spending money drawing up new options for the ill-served rail corridor from
Birmingham towards Leeds.
26%
Startling
even in the context of rampant overall inflation, the annual rate of
construction material price rises peaked at 26% in June last year, while HS2
was eating up steel and reinforced concrete for the civil engineering works
between London and Birmingham. Labour costs have also risen fast. Those new
price realities, of course, do not only affect HS2 but whatever other schemes
the government decides on.
£3.4bn
The total
amount spent buying up land and properties for the original route of HS2 –
including £584m on the planned legs north of Birmingham, with more than 400
houses bought on the way from Crewe to Manchester alone.
£4.8bn
The revised
price of rebuilding Euston station, up from an initial overoptimistic £2.6bn,
is illustrative in several ways: the escalating budget and the temptation to
save some of that money by lopping off the end of the route in London. It also
highlights how government indecision has driven up the price.
Not only
have delays led to far higher construction costs because of inflation over
time, but HS2 has also had to write off £100m worth of initial designs as the
specifications changed. In the words of a damning public accounts committee
report, the government was still “not clear what it is trying to achieve” at
the revised station. Meanwhile, hundreds of homes, as well as businesses and
green spaces, have been bulldozed in the surrounding area.
£11.5bn
The budget
for other rail schemes has also ballooned, not least in the north – supposedly
where funds could be diverted. The TransPennine route upgrade to improve
journeys between Manchester and Leeds – with all the disruption of working on a
live railway rather than building a new line – is now four times its original
£2.9bn budget, according to the National Audit Office.
28,500
The number
of people in the construction industry now working on HS2, according to the
Department for Transport, including more than 1,000 who have come through on
apprenticeships, and more than 3,000 who were previously unemployed.
Longer-term careers in the UK are now in question. The line from Crewe to
Manchester alone was expected to directly employ 17,500 people.
The number
of HS2 Ltd employees earning more than £150,000 a year, helping fuel criticism
that the management costs of the project are excessive. Mark Thurston, the
chief executive who left HS2 on Friday, was paid £676,000 last year and was by
some distance the UK’s highest-paid public official.
14 years
The period
for which there would need to be weekend closures on other mainline railways to
upgrade existing lines if HS2 were scrapped, according to Network Rail
testimony to ministers in 2020. Even if Sunak does give the HS2 leg to
Manchester a stay of execution, the DfT expects its eventual opening to be
delayed, with trains expected in the mid-2040s rather than the original 2033.
Redesigning
and legislating for Northern Powerhouse Rail could result in further decades
elapsing, if the work done to pass the bill enabling the high-speed route to
Manchester is jettisoned, given that the core design of NPR depends on about
22km of HS2 track.
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