Recommendation 21

The creation of thousands of jobs is central to the Department and HS2 Ltd programme’s case for building the railway. The Department told us that the growth strategies of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands envisaged that the programme would bring up to 180,000 and 100,000 job respectively, plus around 65,000 jobs expected at Old Oak Common. It recognised, however, that it now needed to turn these expectations into a reality. While jobs created by investment in the areas that will benefit from the railway are promised to materialise once the programme is complete, the Department expects that thousands more jobs will be created to support the construction of the railway. It told us that so far HS2 Ltd had been responsible, through its contractors, for creating around 16,000 jobs, which was expected to increase to around 30,000 at the peak of the programme.51