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HS2 Ltd is spending more than £100m building a “shed” for bats despite there being “no evidence” that high-speed trains interfere with the protected species, the chair of the government-owned company said.
Sir Jon Thompson told a rail industry conference that a bat protection structure is being built in Buckinghamshire to appease government adviser Natural England, as all bats are legally protected in the UK.
“We call it a shed. This shed, you’re not going to believe this, cost more than £100m to protect the bats in this wood,” he said.
The saga is an example of the UK’s “genuine problem” with completing major infrastructure projects, the HS2 chief told the Rail Industry Association’s annual conference in London.
The curved structure will run for around 1km (0.6 miles) alongside Sheephouse Wood, creating a barrier that will allow bats to cross above the high-speed railway without being affected by passing trains.
Other more expensive options, including a bored tunnel and re-routing the railway away from the wood, were considered during the passage of the High Speed Two (London to West Midlands) Act through parliament.
After receiving the go-ahead from Natural England for the design of the shelter, Sir John said HS2 Ltd was forced to spend “hundreds of thousands of pounds” on lawyers and environmental specialists because the local council did not approve the work.
“In the end, I won the planning permission by going above Buckinghamshire Council’s head,” he explained.
Sir Jon said HS2 Ltd has been required to obtain 8,276 consents from other public bodies in relation to planning, transport and the environment in order to build phase one of the railway between the capital and Birmingham.
“People say you’ve gone over the budget, but did people think about the bats [when setting the budget]?” he said. “I’m being trite about it, but I’m trying to illustrate one example of the 8,276 of these [consents].”
Sir Jon, who has led the project since Mark Thurston left his role as chief executive in September 2023, warned in January that the estimated cost for phase one had soared to as much as £66.6bn.
In 2013, it was estimated that HS2 would cost £37.5bn for the entire planned network, including now-scrapped extensions from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds.
In October last year, the then prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that extending HS2 from Old Oak Common to Euston was reliant on private investment as part of an attempt to save £6.5bn of taxpayers’ money.
Major HS2 construction work at a site alongside the existing Euston station has been halted since March 2023 due to funding doubts.
Last week, a former Downing Street transport adviser said that HS2 was “doomed from the start” after ministers revealed that they could not confirm whether the project was £10bn or £20bn over budget.
Andrew Gilligan, head of transport at think tank Policy Exchange, wrote in The Sunday Times that the intercity high-speed rail network is Britain’s “worst infrastructure scheme in modern history”, calling for the scheme outside of the West Midlands to be “left in the grave”.
