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High Speed 2 Line

As is normal for large projects, the Cabinet Office’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) is conducting assurance of the HS2 programme as it proceeds into its delivery phase. It is standard practice for this to include a small cross Government team, and not unusual for the Cabinet Secretary to take an interest on projects of this scale. ‎

Headlines from the IPA's work on Phase 2 of High Speed 2 has now been reported in a NAO report on the HS2 project, published on 28 June. The work informs future cost estimates for HS2, as these are developed.

HS2 has undertaken a general review of the report. This includes points on emissions where HS2 consider reducing the speed of the railway makes minimal impact to the construction carbon footprint, and on costs where comparison with other schemes is not being made on a like for like basis.

For example the French track has no new stations, it does not go through a dense built-up urban area, it does not have the tunnels that we are building on HS2 to protect the environment,‎ and property prices are very low in comparison to the UK. The net result is that it is cheaper, but we will use joint ventures including continental firms with experience of building high speed rail and this will drive down our costs.

The review did not specifically cover costs or emissions arising from the development of Euston Station. However, HS2 Ltd is committed to minimising the carbon footprint of HS2 as far as practicable and to delivering low carbon long distance journeys supported by low carbon energy. We will do this by, where practicable, avoiding carbon in the design, reducing carbon from construction and operations, using and/or generating low carbon energy and sequestering carbon.