Work Continues Building HS2’s Tallest Viaduct (Image: Getty)
Managers overseeing the ill-fated HS2 high speed rail line spent tens of millions of pounds attempting to discover how the project squandered £46billion of taxpayers’ money. HS2 Ltd, the government-owned business managing the planned line between London and Birmingham, spent £77.8million on consultants in just one year. And ministers have admitted the cost was so high because the firm was attempting “to find out what work had been done for the money that has been spent”.
So far £46.8billion has been spent on the line, and it is still unclear how much it will eventually cost, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs in May that the line would cost between £87.7billion and £102.7billion but HS2 Ltd now says it will not have a firm figure until spring 2027, after the National Audit Office warned there is “a high level of uncertainty” around the current estimate.
It is also unclear when services will become fully operational and services to Euston, in central London, may not be operating until 2043 – but again, HS2 Ltd does not expect to have a clear date until next year. Construction began in 2020.
The Department for Transport is sitting on 18 sq km of land and 1,256 properties purchased for the cancelled northern sections of the line at a cost of £643million. Some of this land will be kept for future use but around 560 properties are to be sold, with the sale process expected to cost £9million.
HS2 Ltd says consultants are being employed to help with a “reset” designed to improve the way the project is managed, which is expected to cost £153million in total.
But Lord Hendy revealed this included working out what had happened to the billions spent on the project so far. He made the admission in the House of Lords, saying: “HS2 Ltd spent £77.8million on consultancy in 2025-2026. This targeted advice was used to support the fundamental reset and its scope and cost.”
He continued: “In respect of the spend on consultants, the spend in the 2025-26 financial year is for a fundamentally different purpose than any money previously spent on consultancy for HS2.
“The company was not in control of the contracts it had let, or of what work had been done. The effort to find out what work had been done for the money that has been spent – roughly two-thirds of the original budget has been spent and only a third of the work has been done – is testimony to the way in which the project was managed.
“Getting control of it means finding out what was done, and that is what this money has been spent on.”
Former Chancellor George Osborne visited Manchester to make an HS2 announcement in 2014 (Image: Getty)
The High Speed Two or HS2 line was originally meant to run between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, and was expected to cost between £31billion and £50billion in 2011 prices.
But the scheme was repeatedly cut back after going over budget, and only the first phase, between London and Birmingham is still going ahead.
A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said: “Fundamentally resetting HS2 was the only way to regain control of the project and break the cycle of poor delivery, delays and cost increases. This is a hugely complex task – requiring a vast amount of external industry expertise – and has been carried out in parallel with an increase in productivity across HS2’s vast 140-mile construction programme.
“The reset is already delivering results, with six major construction milestones hit ahead of schedule last year, more than 300 back office roles removed and plans developed to save up to £2.5billion by simplifying the railway. Any costs associated with the reset will ultimately pay for themselves through improved management and efficiencies.”
The Government appointed former Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild as head of HS2 in December 2024, with instructions to get the project under control.
Ms Alexander said taxpayers, passengers and communities along the HS2 route “have been let down by years of mismanagement”
Labour MP Andy Burnham, 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 overseeing rail infrastructure and services, which may give Sir Andy a role overseeing both HS2 and another planned scheme, Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), due to run between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and York.
But MPs last week warned that NPR could go above its £45billion budget because lessons from HS2 have not been learned.
Clive Betts, deputy chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Our committee has heard troubling echoes of the same mistakes in loose governance that HS2 made early on, and so much of the project remains almost impressionistic, 12 years on. HS2 have even been brought on board to develop NPR’s own plans. As HS2 has been a casebook example of how not to run a major project, so their involvement in NPR does not fill us with confidence.”