The most hackneyed sign off from official bodies of all sorts when they have been identified as having screwed up yet again invariably includes a phrase along the lines of “lessons have been learned”. We have all learned of course that little or even nothing seems to have been learned at all and the same miscreants – water companies, police forces, hospital departments etc – are before long back on their naughty stools once again, promising to do better.
So it is no surprise to hear Parliamentary spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) saying it is not confident that the Department for Transport (DfT) has learned all the lessons from its past failures in its management of other rail projects. It sees clear risks that the full Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) programme and benefits cannot be delivered within its £45 billion funding cap.
The HS2 experience you would think would have made the Department for Transport perhaps a little bit careful to avoid any similarity with the planning and project development approach used on HS2 that has been so heavily criticised. But far from it. In fact any lesson learned seems to have reinforced a determination to do things pretty much as they were done before, even to the extent of commissioning HS2 to develop plans for the NPR line from Liverpool to Manchester.
The PAC says HS2 Ltd’s involvement heightens the serious risk posed to the final phase of NPR (needed for the full connectivity and benefits) if DfT cannot scope NPR within its £45 billion funding cap, or if early cost estimates prove unrealistic, which can’t be said to be strongly unlikely. The PAC said: “As HS2 has been a casebook example of how not to run a major project, so their involvement in NPR does not fill us with confidence.”
NPR is no mere vanity project. Poor transport connections between cities in the North stifle productivity and limit opportunities for workers and businesses. But despite more than 12 years of planning, NPR remains at an early stage. Journey times, frequency, capacity, the exact route of the new line, who will build these new lines, and how investment in urban and industrial regeneration will be prioritised, all have yet to be determined.
The report finds echoes of similar failures seen in the troubled HS2 programme”, that risk being replicated on NPR. Similarities with HS2 early stage planning abound. For instance, DfT lacks formal governance arrangements for joint decision-making with other Departments. The MPs say that without the injection of sufficient local funds, an enhanced scope to increase local benefits in Manchester could be at the expense of benefits in another local area. “This is particularly worrying,” says PAC, “as it was the lack of robust governance in the early stages of HS2 which led to all the problems from which it has still not recovered so far.”
The PAC argues that as the cap was determined before the entire project was designed, scoped and costed, it is not even clear how HM Treasury arrived at the £45 billion cap. The committee says DfT must now set out how it will manage its spending within this £45 billion envelope, and the Treasury must similarly explain how the funding cap was determined. These will be interesting answers – let’s hope lessons will be learned from them! CL
Nick Barrett
Editor