Recommendation 8

The Department told us that a full, revised business case will need to be produced for Phase 1, taking account of what it now knows about costs, the changes to scope and what that means for the overall benefits.15 The Department said that key benefits remain – such as increased capacity, journey times and wider economic benefits from investment and regeneration around stations.16 But not building 2a and 2b reduces additional capacity and the possibility of faster journeys north of Birmingham, and the previous business case depended on delivering 2a and 2b.17 The Department said that there is undeniably more work to do to get to the new business case, as it represents a significant reset of the programme, and it will need to do further work both to figure out costs and on the benefits that can now be delivered. It told us it would be doing that work in the first half of 2024.18 The Department told us it would take longer than that to produce a detailed plan for a privately funded Euston development.19 Cost escalation