There’s been lots of stuff to unpick in Wednesday’s budget which was the first one from Labour for 14 years. Much of the endless speculation running up to it proved to be wrong. What wasn’t wrong was an expected announcement that High Speed 2 will be running to Euston.

Chancellor Rachel Reeve confirmed that the Government will directly fund the roughly £1bn cost of completing the 5.4-mile tunnel drive from Old Oak Common. The Tories has said this would only go ahead if private finance funded it. The new Labour government knows this was just an excuse for more dither and delay, so has committed to funding the work from Government funds.

Some people have expressed surprise that – whilst the tunnels will be built, there’s no announcement on building the HS2 station at Euston. There’s a reason for this.

The TBMs to bore the tunnels are already being assembled on site at Old Oak Common. There’s a tight window for launching them as any delay would impact on the construction of the HS2 station at Old Oak Common, so the decision had to be made quickly and the budget was a handy event to include it in.

The announcement of Euston station is much more complex. Plans for the station had changed a number of times due to the Government changing its mind on the size of the oversite development (OSD) and latterly, due to the station being designed by a Committee, the Euston Partnership Board. There’s an old adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. It’s similar in intent to ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. All the different partners in the partnership wanted their needs and aspirations included in the station design and the costs escalated massively as a consequence. Now the new Government has redrawn plans yet again. Another budget announcement was the appointment of Bek Seeley to chair the Euston Housing Delivery Group which will be involved in Euston station design and the surrounding area. Meanwhile, funding for Euston station redevelopment isn’t expected to be announced until the March 2025 spending review. As things stand, there’s still considerable uncertainty over what the actual HS2 station will look like, many platforms it will have, or even when construction will begin – only that HS2 WILL get to Euston. For the rest, we’ll just have to wait and see…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312