HS2, what went wrong?

Rob Naybour , Chief Executive, Weston Williamson + Partners

It feels like such a long time since 2009 when Gordon Brown and Andrew Adonis – with cross party support - launched HS2 and with it a bold plan for Britain’s future infrastructure. Fast forward to 2023, and we have Rishi Sunak and Mark Harper –with an eye on a general election – announcing that plans to extend HS2 beyond Birmingham would be abandoned. I have some sympathy with the Government, who are faced with spiralling costs. Ultimately, however, it was poor decision making by ministers over many years which has led to this point of political failure, and a sad indictment of UK Government’s inability to take infrastructure seriously.

HS2 was always well-intentioned: conceived to bridge regional divides, boost productivity, create jobs, and improve quality of life for millions of people. When it was launched, HS2 attracted support from across the political spectrum, as well as from businesses, communities and civic leaders, who understood its transformative potential – particularly where they would benefit from a new station. HS2 failed, however, to capture the hearts of the public, who balked at the cost – even though the initial ￡7bn price tag of the London to Birmingham phase now seems ridiculously low with hindsight.

What went wrong? Part of the problem seems to be that the Government lost sight of the big picture, giving in to a series of short-term political pressures which then led to rushed and, ultimately, expensive decision-making. Tunnelling under the Chilterns is a remarkable technical achievement, but very expensive. In time, the focus shifted to finding savings elsewhere. The salami-slicing began: cancelling the Birmingham to Leeds leg, hesitating over connections into Euston, and now the decision to stop entirely at Birmingham. In the meantime, inflation did the rest, and the Treasury put up the red flag.

We remain convinced that taking HS2 to Manchester (and other major cities – including ultimately to Glasgow and Edinburgh) remains key to stimulating development in regions that have historically been underserved in terms of connectivity and growth opportunities. The original rationale remains valid: by linking large cities around the UK, HS2 will facilitate more efficient travel and more evenly distributed business investment, as well as benefits to tourism and many other sectors of the economy. At the other end of the line, connecting at Old Oak Common - where HS2 can connect to Crossrail for onward connections - makes much more sense than terminating at Euston, where a lack of space not only causes practical difficulties but also means that the economics of development there simply don’t stack up.

We established a studio in Manchester on the back of the Government’s commitments to support transport-led regeneration across the north. We are not the only business to have made such a move, and we remain committed to our Manchester presence despite the Government reneging on the second phase of HS2. There is still much to do to improve east-west links in the north of England, and although these hopes remain alive the loss of 22km of shared HS2 track means much rethinking is now required. ?I make no pretence that we saw this coming, but we could see that in the political expediency that drove HS2, the project avoided the optioneering and scrutiny that we see on similar projects around the world.? In that context, WW+P with the support of Alistair Lenczner (an excellent polymath engineer – now working in France!) published a series of alternative proposals including a fully interchanging station at Curzon Street and through-stations at both Manchester and Leeds. These tried to show how the project could maximise passenger benefit and improve sustainability by better exploiting existing infrastructure. One thing is very clear: however infrastructure funding is now going to be allocated, it needs to be more people-focussed in order to deliver real, enduring benefits and attract public support.

There is little point urging the Government to reconsider its decision on HS2: that would be another U-turn too far, and political insecurity makes it impossible to do such a thing with a general election looming. It will take a new government – and hopefully one with a healthy majority to withstand short-termism – to get HS2 back up and running again. For now, the current government needs to pause the reversal of land acquisitions and anything else that would make re-starting the Manchester-Birmingham leg impossible, and leave it for a new government and a new Parliament to decide.

In the meantime, there are lessons to be learned from the Government’s failures over HS2. Large-scale infrastructure needs to be conceived and scrutinised as a catalyst for many other things: whether that is climate resilience, housing provision, economic agglomeration, rebalancing the economy, or creating local connections and last mile journey planning to improve people’s daily lives. There is an opportunity to take stock and to learn from international best practice – something the UK seems stubbornly to resist – for instance by co-ordinating infrastructure with other aspects of planning, considering more stations along the route with coherent development and local transit, and full integration with strategic east-west connections in the north and midlands. We have seen to everyone’s cost that rushed decisions and infrastructure do not mix: a longer-term view is once again needed to give Britain the infrastructure it still badly needs.