'It's been harder than we thought' - HS2 boss says Birmingham to London construction needs 'reset'

Mark Wild, the CEO of HS2 Ltd, also could not commit to whether the first trains between Birmingham and London would run between 2029 and 2033, as suggested previously.

His comments came as a minister toured HS2 Curzon Street Station in the city centre recently to discuss how the Labour government could help support the delivery of major projects.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) during the visit, Mr Wild said a ‘reset of the programme’ was needed, which could take the rest of the year to do.

“This is of a scale never done before – the last mainline terminus we built was 1899 in Marylebone,” he said. “It’s of an epic scale.

“Truth is also the construction has been harder than we would have thought so we’ve lost ground in construction.

“So a combination of factors of getting a little bit behind and also the complexity to come means we need to reset the programme.”

He continued: “I’m sure with hindsight, I’ve said this publicly, things could have been done differently but my interest is the future.

“The good news is that this is all completely solvable and I’m very, very confident – but you get one chance to reset it to give people confidence.”

Asked whether the aim was for trains to run between 2029 and 2033, Mr Wild responded: “There is fantastic work going on here, you just need to look at the amazing engineering work, the quality of the people, the commitment.

“But as I’ve said publicly, and the reason I’m doing this job, we need to reset the programme.

“We’re so far into the civil engineering now, it’s time to reset – as frustrating as it is, that will take me the rest of this year to do.

“Standing here, I don’t really have an answer – I’m just going to do the work.”

He went on to say: “I have said to the government though, before the summer I’ll give them some advice and we aim by the end of this calendar year to have firm advice about the time.

“I hope people are patient – it’s the only time we’ll do it [a programme reset] from now until the end of the job.”

Mr Wild also said that they are doing a lot of work “productivity-wise” in the meantime.

“Two things are happening in parallel,” he said. “Peak production and at the same time, parallel to the reset.”

“It’s not like we’re sitting on our laurels.”

Mr Wild added that the HS2 project would “generate very substantial economic benefits” for Birmingham and shared optimism over the Labour government’s plans to accelerate the delivery of major projects.

The government has said it will do this by bringing together two bodies into one, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA).

“Birmingham has always been and always will be a really important city-region for us in the UK,” Darren Jones, the government’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told the LDRS during his visit to Curzon Street Station.

“We’ve been very clear we want to get Britain building again and HS2 has been building for a long time.

“They’ve been doing some great things but we also know the project has lost control in terms of time and cost – and that’s a real problem for us.

“So there’s going to be lots of lessons that we can learn from the HS2 project to apply to other big projects across the country as we look to build more houses, water infrastructure, energy infrastructure and more railways.”

But Mr Jones could also not say whether trains will run between 2029 and 2033.

“We’ll get a clearer answer for that from the new HS2 Ltd boss Mark Wild and the team in the run-up to June,” he said. “We’ll be able to confirm at that stage.

“We want to make sure we’re working at pace as quickly as possible but making sure we’re getting the job done properly the first time round.”