Cost of HS2 ‘bat tunnel’ 20% higher than previously thought

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The final price of the famous high -speed bat is on the right track to be the fifth of what was previously thought, and the numbers obtained by the Financial Times.

HS2 President Sir John Thompson told the Railways Industry Conference in November that the conservation project will cost 100 million pounds – a number of public awareness.

Thompson estimate was based on the 2019 price of 95 million pounds, which is the numbers obtained from HS2 by offering a request for freedom of information.

The amendment for inflation, the amount will be 119 million pounds in today’s prices, according to FT accounts. In addition, the structure cannot be completed until next year, which means that the final costs may rise with inflation.

As of January this year, about 65.5 million pounds in 2024-on the long-length structure of a kilometer that was designed to protect the bats from hitting the trains in the railway tunnel in Buckchamshire.

The figures indicate that there are still about 53.5 million pounds in the project. But the experts have warned that the nature of public contracts means that even if the ministers cancel the contract, they will struggle to decline all the unless expected money.

Nobel Francis, director of economics at the Building Products Association, who added that it is necessary to learn lessons for future projects, said he would be very expensive to break the contracts despite the high costs.

“To move forward, the government needs to ensure a solution to these cases before building in major infrastructure projects,” he said. “There is a lot of unnecessary work, additional construction works such as the bats tunnel in mitigation, which leads to an increase in construction costs.”

The tunnel, designed to protect a colony from the Becchstein Rare rackets, has become a coding symbol of the exhausting British planning system and severe costs in HS2.

Steve Reed, the Minister of Environment, told FT that he was “ridiculous” that taxpayers spend “vast amounts” on the bat.

He said: “The regulations have withstood the construction of homes and infrastructure, the prohibition of economic growth and a few for nature.”

“For this reason, we offer new planning repairs and a nature restoration box to cancel the ban on building construction and infrastructure and improve results for our natural world.”

The Wildlife Trust, a charity, said that the government has ignored the evidence provided to the high -speed preparation bill for more than a decade, which highlighted better and better alternatives to protect bats in the region, a specific site of special scientific importance.

This included a government decision not to conduct a “strategic environmental evaluation”, which is a legal condition to examine the effect of the wildlife of the plan or program.

Picky Polanger, head of land use planning in the Wildlife Fund, said that the HS2 was “adopted an engineering solution to an environmental problem and this law did not require this.”

“What the law requires is to avoid damage to the residents of the bat, or in reality other protected species. In this case, this could have included choosing a way to avoid harm to the beautiful medieval hunting forest,” she added.

HS2 LTD said: “The demands of the planning and environmental approval process in the United Kingdom come at a high cost, to a large extent of HS2 Ltd.”

The battalion was one of 8,276 approvals on the necessary HS2 from other public bodies to build the first phase of the railway link between London and Birmingham. The UK government launched a major review on how to accelerate planning procedures.

The entire cost of the railways between London and Birmingham continues to escalate and is now estimated at about 67 billion pounds and is scheduled to be reviewed in the coming months. There is still any agreed plan or price for the high -speed railway station at EUSTON Station in central London.

Mark Wilde, who was appointed CEO of HS2 last year, defended the battle tunnel, and told a committee of deputies earlier this year that he “could not apologize” about building the bats because it is “the most appropriate” to comply with the law.

In response to a question about whether he had regretted the decision, Wilde added: “It is an unusual amount of money, but in a plan that costs tens of billions and is built for 120 years,” Wilde added.

The 13 Gramme Bechstein Bats are one of the rarest mammals in the UK, and its numbers have suffered from a widespread decrease due to the destruction of habitats, according to the Break preservation fund.

The bats tunnel is built by EKFB, which is a joint venture between Eiffge, Kier, Ferrovial Construction and BAM NutTall. EKFB refused to comment.