Director joins HS2 - on £400k

Another new director has joined the company behind the controversial high-speed rail link HS2 on a salary nearly three times what the Prime Minister earns.

Alistair Kirk has been appointed as programme and strategy director of HS2 Ltd and will earn £400,000 a year – weeks after the project chairman said he planned to hire 20-30 executives paid more than David Cameron.

Mr Kirk joins from EC Harris, which is part of ARCADIS, one of the leading global transportation consultancies, where he led its infrastructure business in the Middle East, where he helped design a new transportation system in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

HS2 Ltd chief executive Simon Kirby, who earns £750,000 a year, said: "Alistair joins us at an important time for HS2, as we continue the progress from development to delivery. Putting in place the right systems, controls and rigours in our planning is essential to ensure that we build HS2 on time and on budget. Alistair has an excellent track record across the defence and rail sectors. Moreover, his Middle East experience, where transportation is being heavily invested in to stimulate growth and act as a catalyst for change, will also be particularly relevant to helping ensure we deliver the wider benefits of the HS2 Programme."

Mr Kirk said: "I'm delighted to be joining Simon and the HS2 team at an exciting and pivotal point on the programme. The opportunity to help build on the platform for success of such a strategically important programme as HS2 is huge professional incentive for me. Moreover, HS2 will provide similar opportunities for a host of other engineering and programme management staff over the coming years. HS2 - amongst other major projects - will be a programme the UK transportation industry will be rightly proud of."

Sir David Higgins, chairman of the £50 billion rail project, said it would be wrong to 'skimp' on employing workers for the scheme which will cut a swathe through 45 miles of Staffordshire.

Sir David, who is paid £597,000, said it was 'absolutely essential' to pay more to get the right people for the jobs.

"The worst money you can save is skimping on hiring the best people,' he said. "I am determined that we hire the best people.

"We are not going to pay over the odds, we probably won't even pay what the private sector would pay."

He added: "We have to have the flexibility to hire the right people now rather than when something gets into a problem in years to come."

Sir David said the staff would be held accountable for their performance and 'if they don't perform they'll go'.

"They won't be on long-term government pensions or long-term tenure," he said.

"At a senior level, you are talking about people above the Prime Minister's salary, in the next six months we need to hire 20 or 30 of those at least to do a project of this size."

Around 1,500 HS2 staff are set to move to the Midlands at a new construction HQ next year in Birmingham.