HS2 will be further delayed and ultimately cost more than £100bn, critics have claimed, after it emerged only a third of the preparatory work needed for the line is complete.

Just 15 of the 310 structures needed for the high-speed railway line – for viaducts, bridges, cuttings and embankments – are finished, according to HS2’s latest update, despite £32bn having been spent on construction in five years.

While costs have ballooned, not a single bit of rail track has yet been laid.

A further 279 structures are “in progress” but HS2 boss Mark Wild, who took on the job last December, has admitted that the civil engineering phase of the project is “quite behind”.

He has been tasked by the Government with carrying out a “reset” of HS2 after years of delays and allegations of mismanagement.

Critics say HS2’s costs remain “out of control” and that the opening is likely to be delayed well beyond the intended target of between 2029 and 2033 – a deadline already significantly pushed back from the initial opening date of 2026.

Speaking at the High Speed Rail Group’s annual conference this month, Mr Wild said the “civils” phase of HS2 – the infrastructure to run it – should be 70 to 80 per cent complete by now, but just a third of the work has actually been done.

Engineers have struggled to maintain momentum because the project has become “disconnected from the reality of the site works”, he said.

‘We haven’t built any railway’

Quantity surveyor and railway consultant Michael Byng, who has provided his services on HS2, said he believes the total cost of Phase One between Birmingham and London will be £107bn.

“We haven’t ordered any track yet, we haven’t ordered any signal, any overhead lines, we haven’t built any railway whatsoever, add the fact it doesn’t go anywhere near Euston and there’s no interchange at Old Oak Common, we haven’t ordered a power supply from the National Grid yet… it’s a shambles,” he said.

It comes as HS2 Ltd awaits to hear if it will be allocated new longer-term funding in the Government’s spending review next month.

HS2 CEO Mark Wild, right, visits the Old Oak Common station box site alongside Rail Minister Lord Hendy earlier this month (Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)

The i Paper understands Mr Wild intends to give the Government a new finalised timescale for the railway to open and its total cost later this year.

But in the interim he has been writing regularly to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to update her on his findings and this includes a damning assessment of progress on construction work so far.

According to RAIL Magazine, Mr Wild has already admitted HS2 will not open until the late 2030s and the cost of Phase One will be above £100bn.

The Government entered into four “joint ventures” with separate building companies in order to deliver the programme of work but progress has fallen well behind schedule.

Mr Wild blamed a “rush to start” which has meant that HS2 Ltd has been attempting to design and build the railway at the same time, rather than in sequence.

In the first six-monthly Parliamentary report published in December, the Government said £30.2bn has already been spent on Phase One of HS2, and a further £2.5bn on Phase Two before it was cancelled by Rishi Sunak in 2023.

Ms Alexander said she would be restoring “ministerial oversight” to the project and has instructed independent expert James Stewart to carry out a separate review.

What has been built so far

• In an update issued in January, HS2 said only one of the 52 viaducts that are required to be built is complete, as well as 12 of 175 bridges, one of 72 cuttings and one of 111 embankments.
• A further 279 of these structures are “in progress”, while 11 tunnel boring machines have been purchased and 38 miles have been excavated.
• At least £3.4bn was spent on purchasing around 1,800 properties and land to facilitate the railway which was originally intended to connect London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds via two spurs.

Many of these homes may yet be sold now that the project has been cut back.

More than 31,000 people and 3,300 UK businesses are working on HS2 but Mr Wild’s assessment of progress brings fresh headaches for the Government over the need to get a grip of the project.

The i Paper understands that some progress has been made in the the past four months but critics said the project has been allowed to “drift”.

How costs are ‘out of control’

Mr Byng said he believes the project’s costs are “utterly out of control” and that progress has been so slow because of how contracts were drawn up.

“The form of contracts is wrong, the way it’s procured is wrong, there’s no real estimate of costs,” he said.

“The contractors and the consultants are basically on pay-as-you-go contracts and just let the thing drift along.

“It’s allied to the classic British problem of overdesign and overengineering – and it’s just continued a decline which started from day one.

“There’s no lump sum contracts for the contractors or the consultants, there’s no intention to build it to time or to budget or maintain cost control. The cost becomes ‘how long is a piece of string?'”

In December, HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport were unable to agree on a final cost when asked by the Public Accounts Committee.

At that time, MPs estimated it to be close to £80bn.

Doug Thornton, a former director at HS2 who claims he was sacked after trying to blow the whistle on escalating costs in 2015, said: “It’s absolutely scandalous although I’m not surprised.

“There’s been a complete lack of planning. I would think this is going to add years to the project and where does this leave the £80bn figure?

“I think Mark Wild has probably had his eyes opened over the last few months and he’s come to the realisation that this project is far, far worse than he ever imagined.”

HS2 has previously branded Mr Thornton’s claims about his time at HS2 as “simply not true”.

A spokesperson said his claims “were put under intense scrutiny in 2018 by the National Audit Office as part of an investigation into the HS2 project’s property cost estimates.

“The NAO’s report, published in September 2018, found nothing untoward and concluded that the revised 2016 cost estimate was reasonable.”

Huw Merriman, the former Tory MP who served as Minister for Rail for two years, described the project as a “tragedy” that “everyone” should be worried about.

“It was not well put together at the outset, it then changed its terms and it then spiralled from there to the place it is right now,” he said.

“It was the same challenge for us,” Mr Merriman added, referring to his time in government under Rishi Sunak.

“Which is why it got deferred and then [the northern leg] got cancelled.

“Because every single time, you couldn’t turn it round, it was just more money, and it was then eating into other projects which we wanted to get delivered.”

A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said: “Mark Wild has been clear that HS2 faces serious cost and schedule challenges. He is now undertaking a comprehensive review which will report to government in due course and lead to a full reset of the company and project.

“This work is yet to be concluded and, given the scale and complexity of HS2, it is vital that Mark is given the time to carry it out properly.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “The Transport Secretary has been clear that the position the Government inherited on HS2 is totally unacceptable for passengers and taxpayers.

“This Government has taken action to grip the project tasking CEO Mark Wild to fundamentally reset the project, set out a clear plan for its completion and to deliver London to Birmingham safely and at the lowest reasonable cost.”

Who is doing what on HS2?

Phase One of HS2 will see 140 miles of railway track built between London and Birmingham.

The ‘civil engineering’ work was split across four ‘joint ventures’ [JVs] awarded by the Government to various building firms in 2017.

Balfour Beaty VINCI: Building 90km of HS2 in the West Midlands – from the Long Itchington Wood Green tunnel in the south to its connection with the West Coast Main Line near Litchfield.

Eiffage Genie Civil, Kier: Building around 80km of HS2 from Long Itchington Wood Green to Brackley, including tunnels through the Chiltern hills

Skanska, Costain and Strabag: Building the Euston and Northolt tunnels

Bouygues Travaux Publics, Sir Robert McAlpine and VolkerFitzpatrick: Building the twin tunnels in the Chilterns and the Colne Valley viaduct