Kate Lamble

speaker

202 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2021 last heard 27 May

Kate Lamble’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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More or Less · Does a fall in the UK's healthy life expectancy mean what you think it means? · 27 May 2026 podcast

I was.

And we miss you.

For my sins.

So if we go all the way back to 2011, the estimate for the whole route, which then was London to Birmingham and then that Y-shaped route up to Leeds and Manchester, that was thought to cost £32.7 billion.

The government is now estimating £87.7 billion to £102.7 billion.

So they've so far spent £46.8 billion.

Now, some of that went on the plans for Phase 2, which is the route north of Birmingham, which is now not happening.

So on the route from London to Birmingham, it's been just over £44 billion, so about half of the total predicted budget now.

Well, if you put it that way, Tim, it doesn't sound great.

So early on in the process, there's a lot of guesswork.

One former chair of HST told me that costs were set at a time when only three or four percent of the facts about the railway were known.

So, for example, they initially assumed that any land owned by National Rail would be given to the project for free.

It wasn't.

They initially thought they'd need 25 square kilometres of land and then they realised they need 70 square kilometres of land.

There's also assumptions about how much buildings would cost when you need to go in.

So one former council leader in London, when it's running into Euston, talked to me about it being what they call piss poor preparation.

So they had meetings about how much certain blocks would cost.

They thought, well, it's a social housing block.

How much can it cost?

But this is land in central London.

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