{"id":12915,"date":"2025-04-12T06:13:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T06:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12915\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T06:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T06:13:18","slug":"its-been-harder-than-we-thought-hs2-boss-says-birmingham-to-london-construction-needs-reset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12915\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s been harder than we thought’ – HS2 boss says Birmingham to London construction needs ‘reset’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Wild, the CEO of HS2 Ltd,<\/a> also could not commit to whether the first trains between Birmingham<\/a> and London would run between 2029 and 2033, as suggested previously.<\/p>\n

His comments came as a minister toured HS2 Curzon Street Station in the city centre recently to discuss how the Labour government could help support the delivery of major projects.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) during the visit, Mr Wild said a \u2018reset of the programme\u2019 was needed, which could take the rest of the year to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is of a scale never done before \u2013 the last mainline terminus we built was 1899 in Marylebone,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s of an epic scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruth is also the construction has been harder than we would have thought so we\u2019ve lost ground in construction.<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark Wild, the CEO of HS2 Ltd, at Birmingham\\’s Curzon Street Station. Credit: Alexander Brock. Permission for use for all LDRS partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo a combination of factors of getting a little bit behind and also the complexity to come means we need to reset the programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI\u2019m sure with hindsight, I\u2019ve said this publicly, things could have been done differently but my interest is the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is that this is all completely solvable and I\u2019m very, very confident \u2013 but you get one chance to reset it to give people confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether the aim was for trains <\/a>to run between 2029 and 2033, Mr Wild responded: \u201cThere is fantastic work going on here, you just need to look at the amazing engineering work, the quality of the people, the commitment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as I\u2019ve said publicly, and the reason I\u2019m doing this job, we need to reset the programme.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so far into the civil engineering now, it\u2019s time to reset \u2013 as frustrating as it is, that will take me the rest of this year to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cStanding here, I don\u2019t really have an answer \u2013 I\u2019m just going to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DarrenDarren Jones MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, at HS2 Curzon Street Station on Thursday, April 3. Credit: Alexander Brock. Permission for use for all LDRS partners.<\/p>\n

He went on to say: \u201cI have said to the government though, before the summer I\u2019ll give them some advice and we aim by the end of this calendar year to have firm advice about the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people are patient \u2013 it\u2019s the only time we\u2019ll do it [a programme reset] from now until the end of the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Wild also said that they are doing a lot of work \u201cproductivity-wise\u201d in the meantime.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things are happening in parallel,\u201d he said. \u201cPeak production and at the same time, parallel to the reset.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re sitting on our laurels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Wild added that the HS2 project would \u201cgenerate very substantial economic benefits\u201d for Birmingham and shared optimism over the Labour government\u2019s plans to accelerate the delivery of major projects.<\/p>\n

The government has said it will do this by bringing together two bodies into one, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA).<\/p>\n

\u201cBirmingham has always been and always will be a really important city-region for us in the UK,\u201d Darren Jones, the government\u2019s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told the LDRS during his visit to Curzon Street Station.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been very clear we want to get Britain building again and HS2 has been building for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been doing some great things but we also know the project has lost control in terms of time and cost \u2013 and that\u2019s a real problem for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s going to be lots of lessons that we can learn from the HS2 project to apply to other big projects across the country as we look to build more houses, water infrastructure, energy infrastructure and more railways.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr Jones could also not say whether trains will run between 2029 and 2033.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll get a clearer answer for that from the new HS2 Ltd boss Mark Wild and the team in the run-up to June,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be able to confirm at that stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure we\u2019re working at pace as quickly as possible but making sure we\u2019re getting the job done properly the first time round.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Wild, the CEO of HS2 Ltd, also could not commit to whether the first trains between Birmingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,8823,379,12,1263,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-12915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-ldrs","13":"tag-local-hubs","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-transport","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114323523124412298","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}