MPs in the process of approving the HS2 high-speed rail project were given early cost estimates that were “enormously wrong”, according to a former senior insider.
Doug Thornton, the former head of property at HS2 Ltd, told BBC’s Panorama, aired last night, that the costings underestimated the value of many properties that needed to be purchased along the route. Thousands of others had not been budgeted for, he claimed.
Thornton estimated that the figure seen by MPs were hundreds of millions of pounds too low.
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The National Audit Office (NAO) investigated HS2’s land and property programme earlier this year and found that while costs did increase significantly on the project, expected to cost £56bn in total, HS2 was not required to provide its update to MPs.
But Thornton, who was subsequently dismissed by HS2, told the BBC: “There was a gap of almost 100% in terms of the wrong numbers of properties that the organisation had not budgeted for.
“We started to talk about it to our finance team, we talked about it to HR, we talked about it to line managers, so it was there, we were calling it out.”
HS2’s chief executive Mark Thurston told the programme: “I’m not worried about overspending, I’m confident we’ve got a budget we can stand by.”
Earlier this month, the government appointed former WS Atkins chairman Allan Cook as chairman of HS2 after his predecessor Sir Terry Morgan resigned just a few weeks into the job.
