Rishi Sunak cancels Northern leg of HS2

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced he is scrapping plans for the HS2 high-speed rail link to be built between Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester.

The announcement follows much speculation in the media that the Northern leg of the high-speed rail line would be cancelled in a bid to curb rising costs of the project, estimated to have risen to over £100 billion if built in full.

The Prime Minister made the announcement in a speech to Conservative Party members on the final day of the Conservative Party Conference, which has been taking place in Manchester Central from Sunday 1st October until today (Wednesday 4th October).

While the construction of new track between Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester will no longer go ahead, it is expected that HS2 trains would run beyond Birmingham to the North of England. He also stated that money saved on scrapping the project would instead be reallocated to improving public transport links in the North and Midlands of England, including a fully electrified route between Manchester and Hull.

Rishi Sunak also committed to existing plans to upgrade the route between Manchester and Liverpool, which included the HS2 route proposed to run between Manchester city centre and Manchester Airport. He also backed the new Midlands Hub station near Derby where high-speed rail had been set to connect with existing routes in the East Midlands.

There had been speculation that upgrades to Euston Station and the section of line between central London and Old Oak Common station, where HS2 will connect with Crossrail, would also be cut from HS2’s designs; however, these are set to go ahead.

Speaking in Manchester today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said:

“I’m ending this long running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project. In its place we will reinvest every single penny, £36 billion, in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, across the country.”

HS2 was first proposed in 2009 by the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and its route agreed upon by his successors the following year. Work is now underway on constructing the line between London Euston and Birmingham, where it will serve a purpose-built terminus in the city centre. Plans were scaled back in 2021, with services largely running on existing track between Birmingham and Leeds.

The decision to scale back plans has been widely criticised by local political leaders in the region from all sides of the political spectrum, as well as business leaders across the North. Read more here.

Region’s business and political leaders oppose cancellation of Crewe and Manchester leg of HS2