The National Audit Office just delivered a brutal reality check to ministers over the high-speed rail project. Stop rushing the fix. If you don't have absolute confidence in the new delivery plan, don't press the button.
It is a warning the Department for Transport cannot afford to ignore. For years, High Speed Two has been a textbook example of how not to run a major infrastructure project. Costs skyrocketed. Deadlines slipped out of sight. The northern legs were hacked away. Now, after a massive fifteen-month review led by HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild, the government thinks it has a stable baseline.
The spending watchdog says otherwise. They aren't saying the new plan is bad. They are saying that executing it before every single piece of the puzzle is locked down risks repeating the exact same disasters that broke the project in the first place.
The public has lost patience with fictional rail timetables. This latest report from the National Audit Office reveals that rushing into the implementation phase of this multi-billion-pound reset without the right skills, finalized commercial contracts, and a locked-in plan for London Euston will backfire. Ministers need to take a breath.
The staggering math behind the HS2 reset
Let's look at where things stand right now. In May 2026, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander admitted that the cost range for the remaining London-to-Birmingham scheme has exploded to between £87.7 billion and £102.7 billion. To put that into perspective, the original estimate for the entire network back in 2011 was just £32.7 billion.
We are paying triple the money for a fraction of the railway.
Up to March 2026, the government had already burned through £46.8 billion. That includes money spent on the now-cancelled phases to Manchester and Leeds. To even complete this massive re-evaluation and restructuring of the project, taxpayers are shelling out another £153 million just for the administrative process of the reset itself.
The timeline has shifted so far into the future that it sounds like science fiction. Trains won't run between West London's Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street until somewhere between 2036 and 2039. If you want to travel all the way into central London at Euston, or connect to the West Coast Main Line, you will be waiting until 2040 or even 2043.
That is a thirteen-year delay from what was originally promised.
HS2 Phase One Key Figures (May/June 2026 Estimates)
Current Estimated Cost: £87.7bn – £102.7bn
Total Spent up to March 2026: £46.8bn
Cost of the Reset Process: £153m
Old Oak Common to Birmingham Opening: 2036 – 2039
Full Euston Completion Date: 2040 – 2043
Why the spending watchdog is waving a red flag
The watchdog isn't trying to kill the project. They know that cancelling it now would cost almost as much as finishing it, while delivering zero benefits to passengers or the economy. Instead, their warning targets the rush to declare the crisis solved.
The government wants to complete the formal reset process by spring 2027. However, the spending watchdog highlights several massive gaps that remain wide open right now.
Unfinished commercial negotiations
You can't build a railway without contractors. Right now, HS2 Ltd is trying to renegotiate major supply chain contracts to make sure builders are incentivized to save money rather than exploit delays. The project managers hope to shave around £2 billion off the final bill through these commercial resets. But hoping isn't having. Until those contracts are signed, the numbers in the government's budget are just educated guesses.
The black hole at London Euston
Euston station has been the ultimate headache for this project. Construction was paused, designs were altered, and the funding model was flipped to rely on private investment. While excavation of the final major tunnel from Old Oak Common to Euston started in January 2026, the actual station design and funding framework are still not finalized. Rushing the wider project reset while Euston remains an unresolved variable is a recipe for further budget overruns.
Intellectual and organizational capacity
Managing a megaproject requires specific, top-tier expertise. The current management team has eliminated 300 bureaucratic roles to cut waste. That is good. But the watchdog warns that the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd must ensure they have the exact technical skills required for this next complex phase. If they lack the right people to oversee the contractors, costs will creep up again.
Slower trains are a step in the right direction
One major shift in the May 2026 reset plan was the decision to cut the maximum operating speed of the trains. The original blueprint called for trains to run at 360 kilometers per hour. The new plan drops that to 320 kilometers per hour.
This is a rare piece of common sense.
Running trains at 360 kilometers per hour required specialized, expensive technology. Crucially, Great Britain has no existing test track capable of handling those speeds. Building one from scratch was driving up costs and adding years to the construction timeline. By dropping the speed to 320 kilometers per hour, the project aligns with standard European and Japanese bullet train networks.
This single adjustment will save between £1 billion and £2.5 billion. It also shaves a year off the delivery timeline because the trains can be tested on existing rail lines instead of waiting for bespoke infrastructure to be built. The impact on travel times is negligible, but the impact on the taxpayer's wallet is substantial.
The danger of continuing the culture of deferral
The history of this rail line is a history of hiding bad news. Sir Stephen Lovegrove’s recent report into the Civil Service’s role in the scheme exposed years of flawed reporting, inadequate oversight, and what has been described as a culture of deferral. Nobody wanted to own the mistakes, so the mistakes grew.
The previous ministerial task force met inconsistently. Key figures, including former transport secretaries and treasury chiefs, frequently skipped meetings. This allowed dark corners to emerge where failure could grow unchecked.
The current Transport Secretary has re-established this task force with strict attendance rules. This is a good start, but governance structures must change permanently. The spending watchdog insists that ministers must use this autumn to review whether the reset timetable is actually realistic. If it looks tight in October, change it then. Don't wait until 2029 to tell the public that 2036 isn't happening.
What the government needs to do next
Ministers should not treat the watchdog's report as a political attack. It is a roadmap for survival. To ensure this project doesn't collapse under its own weight again, the Department for Transport must execute a specific sequence of actions before spring 2027.
First, heed the autumn review mandate. Use the coming months to stress-test the assumptions made by the management team. If the supply chain resists the new contract terms, face that reality immediately.
Second, lock down the Euston funding structure. Stop treating the central London terminus as a separate problem to be solved later. It is an integral part of the line. Private investors need hard assurances, and the government needs to provide them now.
Third, maintain the spending lid. Financial delegations to project managers must remain tightly controlled. Do not allow a single pound of extra spending without rigorous independent sign-off.
The time for blind optimism is over. Britain needs major infrastructure, but it needs competent delivery even more. Rushing a flawed fix to score a quick political win will only guarantee another multi-billion-pound bailout in the 2030s. Hold the line, pause the implementation, and only move forward when the foundations are completely solid.
