Years of mismanagement and botched decision-making have held the project back, the Transport Secretary said.
Critics, including Reform leader Nigel Farage and Labour peer Lord Berkeley, believe it is still not too late for the project to be scrapped entirely.
Here, The i Paper takes a closer look at what went wrong according to the Government’s review, carried out by former KPMG and Crossrail boss James Stewart.
Although any large-scale, multi-decade project will be impacted by the political winds of the day, other comparator projects have had a “buffer” in the form of external shareholders or joint sponsors.
The most obvious examples are the decision to cancel the HS2 East route to Leeds in 2021 and then the northern leg to Manchester in 2023.
The project ‘started wrong’ – then got worse
Key decisions about HS2 were made because of “pressure from politicians to maintain momentum”, the report says.
“Think slow, act fast” and “projects don’t go wrong, they start wrong” are two mantras that have not been heeded at HS2, Mr Stewart says.
This vision “drove the scope and dramatically increased cost”, Mr Stewart says.
Mr Stewart also makes reference to the idea of “gold plating” – the concept that Britain has had a culture of choosing “iconic” and “state of the art” engineering solutions.
Trust between government and HS2 has ‘broken down’
There has been a fundamental breakdown in trust between the government and HS2 Ltd, the publicly owned company set up to deliver the high-speed railway.
Mr Stewart says the “significant and consistent” cost overruns have resulted in a lack of trust between HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport.
HS2 workers at the Birmingham section of the high speed rail project (Photo: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty)MPs heard before Christmas last year that DfT and HS2 Ltd are still not able to agree on a revised cost of delivery of Phase One and a completion date.
The biggest contributor to increases in cost at HS2 is the Main Works Civils Contracts (MWCCs) – these are the agreements to deliver bridges, tunnels, groundwork, cuttings and embankments to prepare for the railway track.
The i Paper revealed that just 15 of the 310 structures needed for the high-speed railway line are finished, according to HS2’s latest update, despite £32bn having been spent on construction in five years.
Rishi Sunak axed HS2 north of BirminghamHS2 Ltd must take “prime responsibility” for this poor performance, but others who signed off the contracts in government, including the Treasury, are also to blame, Mr Stewart says.
Constant criticism is ‘demoralising’
Mr Stewart argues that HS2 is now subject to “constant criticism” and while this is “inevitable” due to its recent history, that must now change.
“Continued criticism is demoralising and a return to advocacy wouldhelp attract and retain talent into the Programme and increase employee engagement,” he adds.
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Despite this legislation having passed, HS2 has still required more than 8,000 planning consents to date.
Contracts for HS2 were drawn up on the basis that consents would take up to 56 days to be approved – in practice, they have taken far longer, in some cases over a year.
External factors
Unexpected and unprecedented external factors, some beyond the Government’s control, have also had a significant impact on the delivery of HS2.
But ultimately, the Government and HS2 Ltd have “failed to be able to deliver a project of the original scale and size of HS2.”
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