Around 22,000 new jobs are set to be created as construction work begins on Phase One of HS2, the UK’s second high-speed rail link that will run between London and the West Midlands.
Prime minister Boris Johnson said the start of the construction phase is at the centre of plans to ‘build back better’ but detractors believe it will permanently displace thousands of jobs.
Parliament ‘misled’ over cost of HS2
HS2 given go-ahead in Parliament
In April this year the Department for Transport (DfT) approved HS2 Ltd’s Notice to Proceed to the four Main Works Civils Contractors working on the project. This allowed them to commence full detailed design and construction of Phase One of HS2, which is estimated to cost between £35bn-45bn.
In a statement Johnson said: “By creating hundreds of apprenticeships and thousands of skilled jobs, HS2 will fire up economic growth and help to rebalance opportunity across this country for years to come.”
HS2’s main works contractor for the West Midlands, the Balfour Beatty VINCI Joint Venture (BBV JV), along with its supply chain partners, said it expects to be one of the biggest recruiters in the West Midlands over the next two years, with up to 7,000 jobs required to complete its section of the HS2 route. The EKFB Joint Venture (Eiffage, Kier, BAM Nuttall, Ferrovial) – building the section from the Long Itchington Wood site in Warwickshire south to the Chiltern tunnel portals, will recruit over 4,000 roles in the next two years.
HS2’s Tier One construction partners based in Greater London – Skanska Costain STRABAG (SCS JV), Balfour Beatty VINCI SYSTRA (BBVS JV), Align JV and Mace Dragados JV – will collectively recruit over 10,000 new jobs as HS2 gears up for major construction. HS2 Ltd is recruiting for 500 new roles over the next three months.
An estimated 400,000 supply chain contract opportunities for UK businesses will be created during Phase One of HS2, with around 95 per cent of those likely to be won by UK-based businesses.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Stop HS2 Campaign Manager Joe Rukin said: “Trying to spin HS2 as a job creation scheme is beyond desperate, as even if you take the governments low estimate of cost for Phase One of HS2, creating 22,000 jobs works out at almost two million pounds just to create a single job, at a time when well-run businesses are going under every day, and Boris Johnson is rather less keen to mention the 19,590 jobs that HS2 will permanently displace.
“We’ve spent 10 years trying to tell tin-eared politicians that working practices will change in the future and drastically reduce the need for travel, and even now it’s happened right in front of their eyes, they refuse to accept it.”
Money would be a lot better spent in giving ‘fibre to the premises’ to the whole of the UK, improve infrastructure for electric vehicles/alternative vehicles, improving roads (less congestion less pollution), reopening light railway branch lines and green power generation projects like tidal .
HS2 is exactly the sort of project we don’t need.
This always was and remains a vanity project. The cost benefit ratio for it must be heading South like a jet in a power dive. It fails to make any sense in relation to capacity (WCML capacity is poorly managed), connectivity, capacity and economic growth. I doubt it will ever progress beyond Birmingham so any noise about re-balancing the economy is spurious. It does nothing for the West of England, Wales, East Anglia, large parts of the South and South East.
Claims that freight will somehow miraculously return to rail to exploit the freed up space on the WCML are equivalent to a type of Swiss cheese.
The budget for HS2 would cover electrification of the existing national network and be a much better option at a national level.
What is the likelihood that it will be delayed and overrun the current budget estimates by a significant margin? The project has ducked the inclusion of public transport links to the key stations on the route (£140billion?) and there has been some smoke and mirrors over the numbers presented to parliament. An independent forensic audit of the project would I believe expose some serious weaknesses that could then justify it being cancelled.
Waste of money! 22,000 jobs to replace the estimated nearly 20,000 lost, throygh closures disruption and relocation that were sited on or near the line. Those 22,000 jobs only there for the construction phase anyway, unike the other jobs which were more permanent. This is nothingbut a vanity project that will not provide much additional passenger capacity and merely get more people into and out of London slightly quicker than at present. Those passengers still have to get to the HS2 hubs, which means they will still need to drive. Far better to invest in new conventional lines that can also carry freight, and massively increasing the renewable energy infrastructure across the whole of the UK, which is somewhat larger than London and the hme counties. Higher speed trains require more separation therefore the capacity gains are somewhat illusional. Obsessive politicians pursuing their dreams without the common-sense to analyse holistically are the bane of us all.
I cannot decide whether I support or oppose HS2. The need for infrastructure and long term projects in the UK is massive. Much of our investment in recent years has supported overseas workers, e.g. all of our windmills and solar power generators are imported as are the CCGTs that support these.
I note in the press today that the UK are to take delivery of some floating wind farms: recently heralded as a great UK leading area which will create loads of jobs. The capacity is said to be 50MW (so cost >> £ 100m) to be anchored off-shore Scotland. The significant fact is that these are to be built in Rotterdam …… Where will the new jobs be located and who will pay for these expensive prototypes and who will own the IPRs???
Overpriced – > £100 Billion and counting ….
Guaranteed will be late …
Will not cover north of Birmingham.
Will never be used by the greater majority of the UK population – who will have to fund it.
Environmentally and socially very destructive.
A large proportion of the public funds will end up in the pockets of the private sector with no benefits to this project.
And yet still the main railways infrastructure for the UK will be underfunded and falling into disrepair.
This is a Tory vanity project aimed at distracting the public from the real mess that the country is in. Let’s spend this money on upgrading the whole UK rail infrastructure, not waste it on HS2.
This project has no logic whatsoever and never will. It follows the route of brexit into a void of environmental damage, corrupt profiteering by large contractors, a complete waste of tax payers money. The majority of the country is not behind this awful project. It will never wash its own face guaranteed 100% . This is country is world beating at what? That question will never be answered.
If we’ve learnt nothing else about Covid it is that people don’t have to travel to meet people or have physical meetings on a regular basis. I agree, it is good to meet ‘face-to-face’ occasionally but the routine can be carried out on Zoom or Teams. The part of England that needs infrastructure improvement are fairly simple things: A fast link from Newcastle to Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool etc. Finishing the Metro line in Sunderland to reach Washington and Durham, connecting the three great cities of Sunderland, Newcastle and Durham. Fast links on the East Coast line,, I could go on. Forget HS2, it’s a vanity project and should be canned.
I agree with Steve. Totally misconceived project doomed to overrun in time and cost with the majority of money going to overseas companies because we no longer have the industries to produce the goods. Cross-Rail is a good example of money spent giving contracts to overseas companies.
The aerial photo shows the issue. Two tunnels going into a hill in Switzerland would be the size of two tunnels going into a hill. In the UK, the civil engineers like to take over the whole countryside. From ugly motorway gantries to vast roadside verges, it seems to be a competition to obliterate the green and pleasant land we occupy. This approach will stretch from London to Birmingham, and it will be too late to change anything. When its gone its gone.
How many more times do we have to repeat the same boring anti-arguments for HS2, for Heathrow’s 3rd runway, for smart motorways, for any major infrastructure project. You can’t please everyone all the time, but you can keep lawyers in business for ever at taxpayer’s expense to argue about it, which is why the timescales extend and the costs grow. Take a decision once, get on with the job.
I’m inclined to agree with Steve’s final comment: “Get on with the job”. What is really important in the HS2 project is that we use the project to develop UK products: rail etc. At the moment, it looks as though the UK will get the civil works but not the mechanical works; especially as other countries already have fast trains.
Just like all the wind-mills and solar power units that are beloved of our government: export potential zero overseas employment and added-value content significant.
I am sorry to see so much negative comment. I’m going to make you laugh now, I trust the government! Sorry about that, but I don’t want to govern and in the absence of that wish, I think I have to trust those people who are willing to govern. The project is started. There is nothing we can do now except wish it well. Of course it will overrun, what significant project ever didn’t? Is it a trophy project? Maybe, but all the other countries are doing the same thing.
One thing I will agree with (above), is the amount of kit we are importing. Mr Siemens used to be based in Manchester but make no mistake, today that firm is German. Let’s stop calling the kit windmills (that make flour) and say that it would be nice if we could build our own wind generators. That would be a real step forward. Heavy but modern engineering – generators, fuel cells, railway stock, we need to look carefully at what we are importing and ask where our expertise is going.
But chin up, chest out, if HS2 is going to happen then let’s support it
This is a poor and ill conceived vanity project with no real impact on a large part of the population. It could be stopped and the funds (assuming UK plc has not been declared bankrupt and flogged off to foreign buyers) used to upgrade an modernize the rail system at a national level. Previous administrations emasculated the rail network. There was a useful line from London Paddington to Birmingham and Birkenhead. Also the Midland Main Line offered an alternative route to the Midlands and Northwest. These were emasculated on the basis of claimed savings only to now need replacing at vast cost (omitting public transport connections).
The UK has a sorry record of poorly conceived and implemented infrastructure projects. They fail to come in on time and budget. CrossRail was being lauded not that long ago as a triumph. The begging bowl is out again on this one. Something similar on HS2 looks like a racing certainty. It needs to be stopped now.