The cost of a structure designed to protect a colony of Bechstein’s bats along the HS2 route has topped £100m, according to the railway’s chair, Sir Jon Thompson. Speaking at a Rail Industry Association conference in London, Thompson described the kilometre-long mesh enclosure, sited where the high-speed line emerges from a tunnel in Buckinghamshire, as a “blot on the landscape” built with “no evidence” that bats were at risk from the trains.
Thompson said the railway’s budget was being driven up by legal constraints and conflicting demands from regulatory bodies. He noted that HS2 requires 8,276 separate consents from public bodies, including planning authorities, the Environment Agency and Natural England. The “bat shed”, which protects a species “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe”, was his favourite example. “No evidence, by the way, that high-speed trains interfere with bats,” he added.
Natural England’s chief operating officer, Oliver Harmar, responded that the agency had not required HS2 to adopt that specific structure, nor advised on its design or cost. “Our input has been to comment on whether the proposed mitigations will work,” he said. HS2 said more than 20 alternative proposals were considered but deemed even more costly or ineffective.
Thompson argued that indecision by the government and slow decision-making by public bodies were contributing to cost overruns. “They can take six months to make a decision most of us would make across the boardroom on a Friday,” he said. The transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has indicated the overspend could be between £10bn and £20bn, with HS2’s upper projection for the first phase reaching £74bn last September.
