HS2 Reset Puts Total Bill Past £100 Billion as Trains Get Slower

A government review of the already-truncated high-speed rail project concedes costs could breach £100bn while revised top speeds fall short of the original specification.

A formal HS2 reset document acknowledges total costs may exceed £100bn, up from earlier official estimates.
Planned train speeds have been reduced from the figures used to justify the project's original business case.
The line's scope has already been dramatically cut, with the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg scrapped in 2023.
The project was first approved with a budget of approximately £37.5bn at 2019 prices.
No revised completion date has been confirmed alongside the reset announcement.

The government's formal “reset” of the HS2 high-speed rail project, published this week, puts the potential total cost at more than £100bn — a figure that sits against an original 2019 price-point estimate of roughly £37.5bn.

The reset document, as reported by the BBC, also confirms that planned operating speeds have been revised downward from the specifications used to underpin the project's initial business case.

HS2 has already lost its Birmingham-to-Manchester northern leg, cancelled by the then-prime minister in October 2023, leaving a line that runs from London Euston to the West Midlands and, eventually, to a Crewe extension.

The Phase 1 London-to-Birmingham section remains under construction. Tunnelling and civil engineering work continues across several sites, including the Chiltern tunnel, while the Euston terminus design remains unresolved.

No confirmed revised completion date accompanies the reset, and no minister has put a final figure on total spend.

The original case for HS2 rested substantially on two numbers: the cost and the speed. One has roughly trebled. The other has gone in the opposite direction.