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The cost of delivering the first phase of HS2 is set to soar by £1.3 billion, the Government has admitted.
Rail minister Andrew Stephenson announced the increase during his regular update to Parliament on the controversial £100 billion high-speed rail project.
He said ‘cost pressures’ of about £800 million reported at the previous update had risen by another half a billion pounds to £1.3 billion.
The increase is understood to be down to delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and spending on plans to scale back the size of the terminal at London’s Euston Station.
It will now be ten platforms rather than eleven. The aim to have 17 trains coming and going every hour from the hub, which will link the capital with Birmingham and Manchester, remains.
The cost of delivering the first phase of a controversial high-speed rail project, HS2, is set to soar by £1.3 billion, due to delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and plans to scale back size of Euston terminal
The ballooning cost of delivering the UK’s biggest infrastructure project will reignite fears among Treasury officials that spending is spiralling out of control.
Sources have already raised concerns about ‘astronomical’ costs, which have tripled to more than £100billion over the past decade, and the Treasury is understood to
