It is almost 14 years since the last Labour government announced plans to revolutionise rail travel in England with a new high-speed network. Despite gaining cross-party support and the endorsement of five prime ministers, from Gordon Brown to Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak looks poised to put the brakes on key sections of HS2 amid fears the final price tag could exceed £100bn. Here is long and winding timeline of this controversial project.
December 2009 Gordon Brown announces plans for a north-south high-speed rail network, promising to invest £20bn in railway infrastructure to address capacity constraints on the north-south rail links in England.
May 2010 The new coalition government commits to developing a high-speed rail network as part of a programme to create a low carbon economy.
January 2012 The then transport secretary, Justine Greening, gives the green light to HS2, heralding “a new chapter in Britain’s transport history”. It is now a Y-shaped network from London to Birmingham, with spurs to Manchester and Leeds. Costs have risen to £32.7bn, partly because expensive tunnels have been added through the Chilterns, where many Conservative opponents have constituencies.
June 2013 The government admits HS2 will actually cost almost £50bn. The new railway is expected to begin operations in 2026 and be completed in 2033.
January 2014 The supreme court rejects outstanding appeals by opponents of the rail scheme.
November 2015 Costs are revised up to £55.7bn. The government claims every £1 invested in HS2 will deliver benefits worth more than £2.50 to the UK economy: a total of more than £103bn.
June 2016 The National Audit Office warns HS2 is under financial strain and could be delayed by a year.
July 2016 The route of HS2’s eastern leg is published and includes plans for the trains to cut right through the brand new Shimmer housing estate in Mexborough, near Doncaster. It later emerges that engineers had worked off old maps that were made before 2011, when construction on Shimmer’s 212 houses began.
July 2017 HS2 Ltd accepts it was a “serious error” to make £1.8m of unauthorised redundancy payments to staff.
September 2019 A report by the HS2 Ltd chair, Allan Cook, says the railway may not be completed until 2040 and could cost £88bn.
January 2020 Cost estimates for completing all three phases of the HS2 network increased from £72bn to £98bn (in 2019 prices).
February 2020 The prime minister, Boris Johnson, pledges to build HS2 despite costs allegedly rising to £106bn, according to the Oakervee review of the project.
May 2020 HS2 has gone “badly off course”, says the powerful public accounts committee of parliament, with MPs questioning why HS2’s chief executive was paid a £46,000 bonus on top of his £605,350 salary – the highest of any government official.
September 2020 Construction formally begins on Hs2, starting with the London-Birmingham leg.
January 2021 Environmentalists dig a network of tunnels in Euston Square Gardens, London, resulting in a complex operation to remove them.
June 2021 Concerns over HS2 are a significant issue in a shock byelection defeat for the Tories, as the Liberal Democrats win in Chesham and Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
November 2021 Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, scraps the eastern leg from Birmingham to Leeds. The route remains “safeguarded” in case a future government decides to fund the project.
January 2022 The bill for Phase 2b, extending HS2 to Manchester, is laid in parliament. Shapps hails a “landmark moment”.
March 2023 The government announces that construction of the Birmingham to Crewe leg of HS2 will be delayed by two years. Work at Euston is paused as costs have ballooned to £4.8bn compared with an initial budget of £2.6bn. This means HS2 services will start and stop at Old Oak Common, six miles west of Euston in central London, until at least the 2040s.
June 2023 In its six-monthly HS2 update, the government says services between Birmingham Curzon Street and Old Oak Common should begin between 2029 and 2033, with services to Manchester at some point between 2035 and 2041.
July 2023 HS2 is described as “unachievable” by the government’s infrastructure watchdog. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority warns of “major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need rescoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”
September 2023 A document, snapped by a photographer outside the Treasury, triggered rumours that Sunak could scrap the western spur up to Manchester.
October 2023 The prime minister prepares to confirm he is scrapping the northern leg to Manchester, with the announcement expected to be made at the Conservative party conference in the city.
