A desire to “meet every concern and objection” over HS2 causes delays and extra costs for the high-speed railway project, according to the Government’s independent adviser on infrastructure. Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, told MPs a “private sector approach” would have been to say “Sorry, I have not got any more money”.
He said the decision to retain HS2 Ltd – the company responsible for the project being built – within the Department for Transport (DfT) “can lead to too much oversight”, because ministers being involved in too many decisions “is bound to lead to delays”.
Too much desire to actually meet every concern and objection. He told the Commons’ Transport Select Committee: “It’s bound to lead, I fear, to at times too much desire to actually meet every concern and objection and requirement for extra facilities within a scheme.
“I think it’s 12,000 local agreements which HS2 has had to make after the hybrid Bill. “So you think ‘We’ve got the hybrid Bill, we can now get on with it’. “I’m sorry, guys, no, you can’t. You’ve now got endless local negotiations to take place, and there is, of course, then the risk that in order to just make progress, you say ‘OK’.
“Every time you say ‘OK’, then unfortunately that’s potentially more delay, but certainly extra cost.”. Sir John added: “There is a natural inevitability that when the whole machinery of government is doing something, there is a desire to actually please people rather than a more private sector approach which says ‘Sorry, I have not got any more money, that is all we can afford’.
