Political interference and an engineering obsession with velocity crippled Britain’s most expensive infrastructure project, a long-awaited review has concluded. The £106bn HS2 rail line was plagued by ballooning costs and delays after senior officials prioritised achieving 250mph speeds over practical delivery, according to people briefed on the findings.

Draft recommendations from the inquiry, seen by this newspaper, attribute the failure to a toxic mix of Whitehall interference and a design philosophy that valued spectacle over service. ‘The project was hijacked by politicians chasing headlines and engineers chasing records,’ said one rail industry executive with direct involvement. ‘No one was left to ask whether this was the right solution for Britain.’

Phase 2b of the project—linking Birmingham to Manchester via Crewe—was axed last year, but the review, led by former transport secretary Dame Moya Greene, will urge ministers to abandon the entire northern leg to prevent further haemorrhaging of public funds. Sources say Greene’s report, expected next month, will push for a stripped-down network focused solely on London to Birmingham, with speeds capped at 200mph.

The review’s findings lay bare a decade of mismanagement, where successive governments tied HS2’s fate to electoral cycles. In 2013, then-prime minister David Cameron declared the project would ‘show Britain at its best,’ but insiders describe a culture of secrecy and cost underestimation that spiralled out of control.

Greene’s team discovered that cost-saving measures were repeatedly shelved to maintain political momentum. A 2018 proposal to reduce speeds to 200mph and skip tunnelling under the Chilterns was rejected by then-transport secretary Chris Grayling, who feared it would be seen as a ‘U-turn.’ By 2021, the budget had swollen to £98bn, and the line’s benefits—once touted as cutting London to Birmingham travel time to 49 minutes—were evaporating as revised timelines stretched journeys to over 80 minutes.

• 🔍 Critics argue HS2 became a vanity project, with station designs requiring 14-car trains despite forecasts showing only 10-car demand.
• 📊 A leaked 2022 civil service memo warned that without radical changes, HS2 would deliver ‘negative value for money’ by 2030.
• ⚠️ The review stops short of blaming a single party, but notes that Labour’s 2009 decision to fast-track the project set the stage for later disasters.

The fallout is already reshaping Britain’s transport strategy. The government is expected to confirm next week that it will redirect £19bn of HS2’s remaining budget into conventional rail upgrades across the Midlands and North, including electrification of the TransPennine route and capacity improvements on the East Coast Main Line. Transport Secretary Mark Harper will tell MPs that the move prioritises ‘deliverable projects’ over ‘grand designs.’

Meanwhile, HS2 Ltd, the state-owned company overseeing the project, is set to be wound down by 2026, with its 1,200 staff redeployed or made redundant. The company’s CEO, Nick Colley, admitted to MPs last month that the organisation had become ‘a monument to over-ambition.’ ‘We were set up to deliver the impossible,’ he said. ‘The lesson is clear: ambition must be tempered with realism.’