£46bn of taxpayer cash was spent- now they’ve wasted millions to find it | Politics | News

Executives overseeing the ill-fated HS2 high-speed rail line have spent tens of millions of pounds trying to discover how the project wasted £46bn of taxpayers’ money. HS2 Ltd, the state-owned company running the planned line between London and Birmingham, spent £77.8 million on consultants in just one year. Ministers admitted that the cost was so high because the company was trying to “find out what was done with the money spent.”

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs in May that the line would cost between £87.7bn and £102.7bn, but HS2 Ltd says a firm figure will not be available until spring 2027 after the National Audit Office warned there was a “high level of uncertainty” around the current estimate.

It is also unclear when services will be fully operational and services to Euston in central London may not become operational until 2043; But still, HS2 Ltd doesn’t expect to offer a clear date until next year. Construction started in 2020.

The Department for Transport sits on 18 square kilometers of land, with 1,256 properties purchased for the canceled northern sections of the line at a cost of £643 million. Some of this land will be retained for future use but approximately 560 properties will be sold and the sale process is expected to cost £9 million.

HS2 Ltd said consultants had been hired to assist with a “reset” designed to improve the way the project was managed and expected to cost £153 million in total.

But Lord Hendy explained that this included figuring out what happened to the billions spent on the project so far. He admitted in the House of Lords: “HS2 Ltd spent £77.8 million on advice in 2025-2026. This targeted advice was used to support the baseline reset, its scope and cost.”

He continued: “In relation to spending on consultants, spending in the 2025-26 financial year is aimed at a fundamentally different purpose than monies previously spent on HS2 consulting.

“The company had no control over the contracts it hired or what work was done. The effort to find out what work was done with the money spent (roughly two-thirds of the original budget was spent and only one-third of the work was done) is evidence of how the project was managed.”

“Getting it under control means finding out what’s being done, and that’s what this money is being spent on.”

The High Speed ​​Two or HS2 line was originally planned to run between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and was expected to cost between £31bn and £50bn at 2011 prices.

But the project has been repeatedly cut back after going over budget, with only the first phase between London and Birmingham still ongoing.

A spokesman for HS2 Ltd said: “The only way to regain control of the project and break the cycle of poor delivery, delays and cost overruns was to fundamentally reset HS2. “This is a hugely complex task – requiring a large amount of external industry expertise – and has been carried out in parallel with the increase in productivity across HS2’s extensive 140-mile construction programme.

“The reset is already delivering results, with six major construction milestones being met ahead of schedule last year, the elimination of more than 300 back office roles and the development of plans to save up to £2.5bn by simplifying the railway. All costs associated with the reset will eventually pay for themselves through improved management and efficiency.”

The government appointed former Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild to head HS2 in December 2024, with instructions to bring the project under control.

Ms Alexander said taxpayers, passengers and communities along the HS2 route were “disappointed by years of mismanagement”

Labor MP Andy Burnham, who is likely to become Prime Minister on July 20, is understood to have asked Conservative former West Midlands Mayor Sir Andy Street to run Great British Railways, the new publicly owned company that oversees rail infrastructure and services; This could leave Sir Andy tasked with overseeing both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), another scheme planned to run between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and York.

But MPs warned last week that the NPR could exceed its £45bn budget due to a failure to learn the lessons of HS2.

Clive Betts, deputy chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Our committee has heard disturbing echoes of HS2’s early mistakes in lax management, and much of the project remains almost impressionistic even 12 years later. HS2 has even been brought on board to develop the NPR’s own plans. Their involvement in the NPR does not fill us with confidence, as HS2 is a casebook example of how not to run a major project.”