HS2 Costs Spiral Out of Control: £19bn Budget Balloons to £26bn as Project Barely Passes Halfway Mark

HS2 chief admits the high-speed rail project ‘lost control of the programme’ — warns of up to 100% overspend as MPs grill transport bosses.

Britain’s troubled HS2 project has already blown billions beyond its budget, with costs soaring to £26 billion for contracts originally priced at £19.5 billion, despite being “just over halfway done,” MPs were told on Wednesday.

Appearing before the transport select committee, Mark Wild, chief executive of HS2 Ltd, revealed that civil engineering work — including tunnels and cuttings for the 100-mile line between London and Birmingham — was only 60% complete, far behind schedule.

Wild said the project’s budget projections had suffered from “optimism bias” and admitted that HS2 Ltd had “lost control of the programme.” He blamed the cost surge on a rushed start to construction in 2020, before designs and local planning consents were finalised.

“The bottom line is that, at the notice to proceed, the contractors could not price the risk. They should have cost £19.5bn, and we’ve already spent £26bn — and we’re just over halfway done,” Wild told MPs. “Between 50% and 100% is the likely overspend.”

The HS2 line, once hailed as the future of British rail travel, was initially due to open in 2026. The target was later pushed back to between 2029 and 2033, but Wild has now warned there is “no route” to full service until after 2033.

He described how early political pressure to launch the project led to “delusional optimism” about timelines and budgets.

“If you lose control of the programme, you end up at the extreme end of optimism bias,” he said. “The problem with HS2 is we lost control of the programme.”

Wild added that while COVID-19 and inflation triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine contributed to the financial strain, internal mismanagement and bureaucracy had played a major role. HS2 Ltd, he said, had become “unbalanced” — with too many consultants and not enough frontline staff overseeing contractors.

“We’ve ended up locked in our own bureaucracy,” he admitted.

Wild said a full “reset” of HS2 was now under way, involving renegotiation of contracts, restructuring of staff, and the elimination of unnecessary “gold plating” in design — such as the scrapped idea of air-conditioned platforms at London’s Euston terminus.

“Even Saudi Arabia doesn’t have air-conditioned platforms,” said Lord Hendy, who also gave evidence before MPs.

Hendy criticised the political decision-making behind HS2, calling it “hard to understand why there was such zealotry about the highest-speed railway in a relatively small country.”

HS2 trains are designed to reach speeds of 225 miles per hour, though Wild has suggested operating at lower speeds initially to shorten the testing phase and begin services sooner.

Despite the chaos, Wild expressed cautious optimism that the project could still be salvaged:

“We can get a reset. The key is discipline — no more uncosted ambition, no more first-of-a-kind technology for its own sake.”

However, with estimates now suggesting the project could overshoot its budget by up to 100%, the UK’s most expensive rail scheme remains under heavy political and public scrutiny.