HS2 will deliver 50,000 jobs boost to the West Midlands

The announcement came from transport authority Centro as the newly-established national HS2 taskforce led by Olympics chief Lord Deighton gathered for a summit in Birmingham.

The Black Country will be one of the region's big winners from HS2 seeing 12,500 extra jobs created, generating nearly £1bn for the economy, the study from KPMG found.

The rail network in the region will also be transformed with direct links to Paris and Brussels from Birmingham and an increase in services from stations in Wolverhampton and Walsall.

New images of the planned Curzon Street Station in Birmingham were also released today.

The six-platform station – which will be the biggest building in the city centre – will provide a dedicated link from the Midlands to the European cities. It will span from the existing Moor Street Station to Millennium Point and the historic entrance of the old Curzon Street station.

Geoff Inskip, chief executive of Centro, said HS2 was a great opportunity for the region.

He said: "This will create thousands of jobs and will see the Midlands at the heart of the nation's high speed network.

"We are already at the heart of the road and existing rail networks so to also be at the centre of high speed rail is massive for the region.

"Birmingham as you would expect does really well out of it but there are also huge gains from high speed rail for the Black Country.

"People in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley and West Bromwich will be one connection away not just from London but eight major UK cities and the continent.

"Better connectivity is a great opportunity for job creation and presents a great chance for small and medium enterprises in our region to be better connected and help them grow their business."

The 'How the HS2 Y Network Will Transform the West Midlands' report recommends that one extra train per hour to London from Wolverhampton be run with two extra going to the capital per hour from Walsall. The number of trains going to Birmingham from Wolverhampton would more than double to seven per hour.

Two trains an hour would also go from Wolverhampton to Milton Keynes per hour and one extra train to Coventry, Shrewsbury and Telford every 60 minutes.

Walsall would get six trains an hour to Birmingham up from four.

A new service of four trains an hour would also go between Walsall and Birmingham International with more new connections to Stafford, Liverpool, Northampton, Milton Keynes,

Coventry and Leamington Spa. More than 25,000 permanent jobs would be created in Birmingham, 7,100 in Coventry and 5,700 across the rest of the West Midlands, the Centro report said.

New stations at Curzon Street and Birmingham Airport will slash the journey time from the second city to London in half to 38 minutes as part of the £42.6bn scheme.

Mr Inskip added: "High speed rail gives us this amazing opportunity to link up of cities and towns like never before.

"Centro has already based its £22.5 million new bus station in Wolverhampton which I think everybody agrees is working brilliantly and is great for the town.

"We also have the plans in place for an extension to the tram system which we are close to securing the finance on, so we have some really exciting times ahead for the region and the Black Country is getting a lot of that action. Specialist businesses tend to congregate closely together so it is a great opportunity for them.

"It is completely possible that businesses will see that Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall or West Brom are close to the stations in Birmingham and decide to locate their businesses there."

The HS2 taskforce is meeting in Birmingham today as the first of a series of regional roadshows.

Lord Deighton said: "HS2 is not just a project for London or the station cities and the Growth Taskforce is determined to see the benefits stretch far and wide across the country."