Cllr Henry Higgins is the Chairman of Planning Committee on Hillingdon Council.
We have become used to hearing that major, important national projects will take years longer and cost much more than we were promised. The stories are horrific but so frequent that we have come to expect the worst and not be surprised when it happens.
Whether it is a new rail project, like HS2; a new motorway; an airport expansion; a power station; a major hospital; some new national defence requirement or, now, the restoration of the parliament building in Westminster: the cost will be billions more than was originally announced and the time will be many years longer than forecast.
Nobody seems to know how to stop it from happening. It has become inevitable to the point of being a joke. Yet, it doesn’t have to be like that: other countries do not experience the same, and in Britain it was, until after World War Two, quite normal for us to build roads and railways and manage infrastructure and defence projects in a timely and unremarkable way.
This failure has become a national characteristic and we need to correct it urgently.
I want to highlight particular reasons why this repetitive pattern occurs and make specific recommendations as to how it should be put right and who should act in a different way. We need solutions both for future projects but also for work that is in progress now.
HS2 was a government initiative created in 2009 under Labour when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. Using best high speed rail technology, it was to be an arterial service providing connections the main cities of England. Its priority was to address the rail needs of northern cities where the current network is poor. Its aim was to support both passenger and freight rail traffic. The budget of £30bn was approved by parliament.
By 2025, 16 years later, the project had been reduced to just one incomplete line from London to Birmingham and the current estimate is a cost of £80bn. (£50bn more than it was originally planned to spend). There is no clear opening date. There is no firm plan to extend the high-speed line further north. It is a failed, but very expensive, never- ending project.
The problems arise because the money being used to pay for the project is public money, provided from taxation or from government borrowing. The practices that control the management of public money are very different to the methods that are used for private, investor money.
The lesson is very clear and easy to understand: a major national infrastructure project of any kind should not be undertaken using public funds or the controls which currently apply to them.
There should be clear statement of purpose and value at the outset, before any political approval is granted, which includes not just detailed costs and timings, but all political objectives that need to be included: like contribution to the environment and national heritage. That initial plan also needs to show from where the funds will be raised.
There has to be very clear accountability for the project among civil officers who will award and oversee the contracts. These officials must have the experience and skills to understand what they are being told by contractors. As civil officers they will be employed by the state, long term, for the duration of the project, and for several years after its completion, and a significant part of their payment, at all stages, will depend on success defined in the original statement of purpose.
Contractors should be employed who can demonstrate not only their ability to achieve the intended portion of the project, but also to show, in their detailed plans, that the project provides sufficient return on their investment for them to be able to raise the private funds that will be needed and from where that money will come. All cost estimates should be covered by commercial insurance, which will provide 3rd party oversight.
If there is failure at any stage, contractors will go bankrupt and the civil officers employed by the government will suffer severe financial penalties. If they succeed, they will both be well rewarded, but if the project fails at any stage, they will lose a lot. Whatever the outcomes, the civil officers will remain responsible.
If the enterprise is to be taken into public ownership, then that should only be done when the work is complete and operational, and a price can be set which truly reflects the public value to be obtained (and not the money that has been spent). That intention should be clearly stated in the initial plan so it can be used by the contractors to obtain funds. The amounts must not change.
A project team
For national projects that will cost over £100m there needs to be a specifically appointed team of civil officers.
A project board
The controlling role of Parliament