HS2 Euston. £2bn Spent, Nothing Built

In April 2020, HS2 Ltd set a budget of £2.6bn for Euston station. Their own estimate at the time was £3.0bn. The budget was £400m below the estimate on the day it was approved, and the reason is in the audit report. HS2 Ltd controlled £5.6bn of contingency across Phase One. It chose to fully fund the tunnels and the civil works, then split what was left across everything else at, in the report's words, lower amounts than it assessed would be needed. Eight weeks later, its own estimate for the station was £4.4bn. What followed was four redesign options, none of which fitted the budget, £105.6m of design work written off, three formal early warning notices, and a reviewer who reported seeing no evidence the numbers would ever come inside. By March 2023, around £2bn had been spent at Euston, and construction was paused for two years so somebody could work out what could be built for the money. Nothing here is alleged. Every figure comes from one public document, and the paragraph number is on screen when the figure appears. Source. National Audit Office, High Speed Two Euston, HC 1240, March 2023. Free to download from NAO.org.uk. This channel takes one official report on one public programme and reconstructs what happened, in order, with the mechanism named. No compilations, no top ten lists, no shouting. #hs2 #euston #publicspending #NationalAuditOffice #CostOverrun #infrastructure #megaprojects #ukpolitics #railway #taxpayermoney #projectmanagement #documentary