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Ministers may need to put Britons off taking the train between Birmingham and Manchester because the decision to axe the second phase of HS2 means there will be fewer seats on existing rail services, parliament’s spending watchdog has warned.
The National Audit Office said scrapping the northern leg of the flagship high speed rail link would take three years and cost up to £100mn, and that some platforms would still be built even though they would never be used.
New custom-built HS2 trains that will run on the existing tracks north of Birmingham when the link becomes operational could result in 17 per cent less capacity than existing stock, the watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.
As a result, the government may need to manage demand by “incentivising people to travel at different times or to not travel by rail”, the NAO said, as it urged a “proper reset” of the scheme to ensure value for money.
The report into Britain’s biggest and most contentious infrastructure project — which has been beset by delays, cost overruns and conflict of interest scandals — is the latest in a series of scathing assessments by official watchdogs.
Last October Rishi Sunak, then prime minister, scrapped HS2’s northern leg, claiming £36bn could be saved and put into better-value road, rail and bus projects.
More than £30bn in 2019 prices had been spent on the rail link as of March this year, the NAO said, with £592mn of land bought for the project no longer required.
But the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd, the company in charge of the project, disagree over the final cost, even though all the estimates forecast it will exceed the current budget of £44.6bn.
The NAO said new platforms at Birmingham’s Curzon Street station would still be built but never be used because it was more expensive to cancel their construction.
The watchdog also said Whitehall still lacked a clear plan for HS2’s terminus at Euston station; the transport department had yet to decide on “scope, funding or governance” for the central London station.
The department was pressing ahead with plans for a “new delivery model” that would involve the private sector paying for the tunnel and station in exchange for housing and commercial developments on the site, the report said. But the “DfT expects it may be several years before it could put all arrangements in place”, it added.
Until Euston opens, HS2’s London terminus will be the new station under construction at Old Oak Common in the north west of the capital. HS2 passengers will have to transfer on to the Elizabeth Line or Great Western Railways to reach the city centre.
HS2 Ltd said: “This is a project of unprecedented scale and complexity, and the cancellation of Phase 2 has increased our cost challenges.
“We are now making sweeping reforms to control costs better and deliver the next stage of the programme — passing peak construction between London and the West Midlands, and starting the transition to a working railway,” it added.
Transport secretary Louise Haigh said the Conservative government had “recklessly mismanaged HS2 and allowed the costs to spiral entirely out of control —but this report lays bare the scale of their mistakes.
“We are reviewing this report’s findings, alongside the position we have inherited on HS2 and wider transport infrastructure and will set out next steps in due course,” she added.