HS2 still faces ‘significant risks’, says Audit Office report

The project to build high speed lines between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is falling years behind schedule and costing a lot more than forecast, because both the Department for Transport and the government’s developer HS2 Ltd ‘widely underestimated’ the budgets and completion dates, according to a new report from the National Audit Office. The DfT and HS2 Ltd also failed to manage the risks adequately, the report finds, saying ‘if these risks had been recognised and managed earlier, then the significant activity in a pressured environment over the past year trying to understand and contain cost increases may not have been necessary’.