Desire To ‘Meet Every Concern’ Over HS2 Causes Extra Costs And Delays – Adviser

A desire to “meet every concern and objection” over HS2 causes delays and extra costs for the high-speed railway project, according to the Government’s independent adviser on infrastructure.

Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, told MPs a “private sector approach” would have been to say “Sorry, I have not got any more money”.

He said the decision to retain HS2 Ltd – the company responsible for the project being built – within the Department for Transport (DfT) “can lead to too much oversight”, because ministers being involved in too many decisions “is bound to lead to delays”.

He told the Commons’ Transport Select Committee: “It’s bound to lead, I fear, to at times too much desire to actually meet every concern and objection and requirement for extra facilities within a scheme.

“I think it’s 12,000 local agreements which HS2 has had to make after the hybrid Bill.

“So you think ‘We’ve got the hybrid Bill, we can now get on with it’.

“I’m sorry, guys, no, you can’t. You’ve now got endless local negotiations to take place, and there is, of course, then the risk that in order to just make progress, you say ‘OK’.

“Every time you say ‘OK’, then unfortunately that’s potentially more delay, but certainly extra cost.”

Sir John added: “There is a natural inevitability that when the whole machinery of government is doing something, there is a desire to actually please people rather than a more private sector approach which says ‘Sorry, I have not got any more money, that is all we can afford’.

“I think Government is not very good at saying that.”

It November, the outgoing chairman of HS2 Ltd, Sir Jon Thompson, told a rail industry conference that the company is spending more than £100 million building a “shed” for bats.

He said the bat protection structure in Buckinghamshire is needed to appease Government adviser Natural England, despite there being “no evidence that high-speed trains interfere with bats”.

All bats are legally protected in the UK.

Latest DfT figures show the cost of building HS2 could hit £66 billion at 2019 prices.

In 2013, HS2 was estimated to cost £37.5 billion (at 2009 prices) for the entire planned network, including now-scrapped extensions from Birmingham to both Manchester and Leeds.

The railway between London and Birmingham was initially planned to open by the end of 2026, but the current timeframe is between 2029 and 2033.

A DfT spokesperson said: “We have acted swiftly to put urgent measures in place to bring the cost and delivery of HS2 back under control.

“This includes tasking the new chief executive to assess the current cost and timeline, and to provide an action plan to deliver HS2 at the lowest reasonable cost.”