HS2 boss took home £4.5m during ‘appalling mess’ of project

21 comments

1. Article contents:

   *Ben Clatworthy, Transport Correspondent, June 21 2025, The Times*

   The former chief of HS2 took home £4.5 million of taxpayers’ money while presiding over an “appalling mess” of a project that wasted billions.

   Mark Thurston was at the helm of the disgraced scheme for six and a half years before leaving in September 2023 and then becoming chief executive of Anglian Water.

   He has been banned by ministers from receiving a bonus at the water company for the last financial year because it was found to have polluted our rivers.

   While at HS2, Thurston’s pay ranged from £585,000 to £676,000 a year including bonuses and other taxable benefits. During his time at the government-owned company he took home £4,449,977.

   He joined HS2 in 2017, shortly after parliament signed off the building of the project’s first phase. He previously worked on the 2012 London Olympics and Crossrail, now the Elizabeth Line, the heavily delayed new railway through central London.

   Thurston’s oversight of HS2 was put under the spotlight this week when his successor’s initial findings into the failures of the project were published.

   Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, told the Commons on Wednesday that the scheme had become an “appalling mess” after years of mismanagement.

   She said: “It gives me no pleasure to deliver news like this. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management.”

   Mark Wild, who took over the running of HS2 in December last year, has been carrying out a root and branch review of the scheme in a bid to stem ballooning costs and restore proper oversight.

   Wild’s salary will be declared in accounts published this summer although his base salary is said to be lower than Thurston’s.

   The project was originally due to cost £32.7 billion — in 2011 prices — with the first leg between London and the Midlands opening in late 2026. The pared-back scheme could now cost more than £100 billion.

   In a letter to Alexander, published on Wednesday, Wild said: “The position I have inherited in HS2 Ltd is unacceptable; the organisation has failed in its mission to control costs and deliver to schedule.”

   It was announced that Thurston, 58, was leaving HS2 in July 2023. He said the project was the “highlight of my career”, adding: “I have agreed with the board that someone else should lead the organisation and programme through what will be another defining period for HS2.”

   His appointment to Anglian Water, which he joined in July last year, caused much comment, not least because of government criticisms of the financial stewardship of HS2. Responding in November last year, he told The Times: “If customers want to challenge my appointment, all I can say is that it was a very thorough and comprehensive process.

   “The board clearly thought I was a good fit. They have to account for that and only time will tell whether it was a good appointment.”

   Transport bosses are traditionally the highest paid public servants in the country, with those in the rail industry in particular receiving the biggest remuneration packages.

   The last time the Cabinet Office reported on senior civil service pay was in 2023 with figures for the previous year. The list was not updated in 2024 by the Conservatives before the election.

   It revealed that the 45 highest paid staff at HS2 had a combined pay packet of £8.9 million. Of the top 20 best paid, only six still work at the company three years later. It is understood that many senior executives left the company after Rishi Sunak cancelled the northern leg of the project in October 2023.

   A spokesman for HS2 Ltd said: “Mark Wild is leading a comprehensive reset of HS2 to ensure the project can be delivered for the lowest reasonable cost. This includes reviewing and simplifying the structure of HS2 Ltd itself — putting more focus on front-line delivery of the railway and bearing down on unnecessary costs.

   “This year, we have frozen pay and withheld all bonuses for staff in the highest grades at HS2 Ltd.”

2. This stuff is infuriating. People are struggling to survive and these incompetent fools keep falling upwards with huge salaries.

3. I’ve dreamed of winning ‘just’ two million pounds or so on the lottery or something and know it would completely change my life with the opportunities, experiences, and security it would provide me and my family.

   This guy gets more than double for being the boss of HS2 and achieving, to my eyes, significantly less than if the organization *didn’t* have a head at all during that period.

4. So it seems like they have no incentive to finish on time as the longer it takes, the more they’ll get paid?

5. Imagine the interview at Anglian Water.

   “We’re falling behind Thames Water in the incompetence and corruption league tables. What do you think you can offer us?”

   “Well, I ran HS2 for 6 and a half years”

   “Can you start on Monday?”

6. So go into his bank account and claim the money back….oh wait that’s just going to be for those on benefits

7. This is how the tories and their mates stole our tax money over 14 years. 

   Never forget 37B on the failed Covid app

8. Of course he did. Letting the Tories know you disagree with their policies and lies is the way to deal with this. Don’t, ever, let the corrupt of any party take your money.

9. How do these people continue to get high paying jobs when they are so useless at what they do? He’s clearly not suitable to run a big project or be a boss, but they end up still getting other high paid jobs despite their poor records.

   If I did a bad job, I’d almost always get fired.

10. Seems the real money to be made is becoming a project manager for public sector infrastructure

11. This is why I hate it when people say “work harder and maybe you can afford x” and bs like “I did well, I came from nothing and worked hard, now look at me”. You probably did, but if working hard is all it took, retail and hospitality would be full of billionaires.

12. Why does it always seem that executives get their fat pay and bonuses whatever the fuck up? If it was Joe Worker making mistakes, they’d get the sack.

13. Reading this gives me hope. In Hungary, news like this don’t even make it into the media at all

14. In the UK people rarely seem to use the word ‘corruption’, maybe associating it with what goes on in other countries. The HS2 money pit is corruption.

15. 4,5m over 6 years is not actually a ridiculous salary for running a large company (and, well, he didn’t really “take home” that much because about half would have been returned in tax). The headline’s written to imply he got £4,5m a year, but that’s not the case.

    There are questions over his competence, though I’m not sure most of that is even HS2 Ltd’s fault to be honest, it’s the way that large scale railway infrastructure projects don’t get the same level of planning support as road projects, so they have had to fight nimbies for every yard of track.

16. Why we need a public workforce for building this shit. The corpos will just scam their way to giant paychecks while delivering nothing. Make the army do it or some shit, but get private firms out.

17. And all so that the public could travel 120 miles a bit faster than the existing trains

18. Have spoken to a few folk who worked on HS2 at contractor level and they are convinced these projects are set up with the explicit intent to siphon off money and back hand deals for friends and chums of the government.

    They are never about improving infrastructure or they would actually be built.

19. Article seems like ragebait to me, it essentially boils down to “boss of large company makes lots of money”

    There is no detail in the article that states why he was at fault for the lack of delivery of HS2. Everyone that I have spoken to that worked directly or indirectly with HS2 says that the enormous spend and delay on HS2 is down to the constant rescoping of the project requiring multiple iterations of design, planning etc, combined with it getting bogged down in legal and regulation issues (eg. The bat tunnel or changing the number of platforms at Euston). I don’t know how the boss of HS2 can be held responsible for that if he is working to a perpetually changing specification

    Lazy journalism imo

20. Much like most things. The project probably failed because of this. The rich complain it wasn’t done properly when they are the ones taking the budget for the project. Can’t blame bad budgeting anymore…

21. No money for anything but plenty of money to reward incompetent pals.

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