NAO report criticises management of HS2

The DfT’s latest estimates put the cost of the project at up to £88bn, 58 per cent higher than the funding currently available. However, estimates from other sources put the overall cost at more than £100bn, with services on Phase 2 lines to Leeds and Manchester not complete until the 2040s. Although work is already underway on some parts of HS2, main construction is yet to begin and a final decision on the project’s future is due in the coming weeks. 

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According to the NAO, the original timeline for Phase 1 of the project from London to Birmingham was overly ambitious and based on previous infrastructure programmes that did not have the same scale and complexity as HS2. The NAO issued warnings about the timeline in both 2013 and 2016, but HS2 Ltd and the DfT failed to heed them and only revised its schedule for the opening dates in April 2019, by which point estimated costs for Phase 1 had risen from £31bn to £40bn.