New station to be built to original specification despite cut to northern stretch last year
The new Birmingham Curzon Street station will be built with more platforms than needed to run HS2 services in an effort to save keep costs down on the pared-back rail scheme.
Last October, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak announced his decision to cancel phase 2 of the high-speed project, which would have run from Birmingham to Manchester, to contain runaway costs.
An update published today by the National Audit Office, which looked at the Department for Transport (DfT) and HS2 Ltd’s responses to the cancellation, said the pair had moved quickly to reassess the altered programme.
The DfT operated on the general principle that it would stop work no longer needed for phase 1, unless it would cost more to do so.
“As a result, some infrastructure work may be completed that is not needed for phase 1,” the report said.
“For example, DfT has decided that all platforms will still be built at Birmingham Curzon Street station, although they will not all be made operational as part of the HS2 programme, to avoid unnecessary costs.”
No substantive construction work had yet begun on the phase 2 route itself, although HS2 had begun early enabling works including investigative boreholes and moving utilities such as gas pipes.
The company has an obligation to reinstate land to its original state, which it anticipates will take until summer 2027 and cost up to £100m in 2024 prices.
By the end of March 2024, the HS2 programme had spent £592m buying land and around 1,000 properties on the phase 2 route that are now no longer needed.
DfT and HS2 Ltd are developing proposals for disposing of an initial set of property, focused on 179 parcels of phase 2 agricultural land across 63 farms.
“Other types of properties will provide different challenges, such as housing where the speed and timing of sales may impact local housing markets,” the report said.
The previous government’s cuts to the scheme also included mothballing the route between Old Oak Common in west London and HS2’s intended terminus at Euston in central London.
It decided that the new station at Euston would be built with just six platforms, almost half of its original scope, under new management and with the backing of private investors.
DfT’s plan for “resetting” the Euston job along these lines is still at an early stage, with no decisions on scope, funding or governance.
The department expects it “may be several years” before all arrangements are put in place, but some works “may need to proceed ahead of this to avoid delays and potentially higher long-term costs”.
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HS2 is hoping to begin tunnelling between Old Oak Common and Euston next year.
The work for the NAO report was completed between April and June 2024, before the election of a Labour government in July.
Louise Haigh, the new transport secretary, recently told the Evening Standard that she was “working at pace” to decide what to do with the Euston area.
She described HS2 plans as “an absolute mess” and that it would be a “huge job” to correct them.
There was no indication in last week’s King’s Speech that the Labour government intends to reverse Conservative cuts to the scheme.
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