HS2: ‘As with any delay, the costs will increase’ 

• WE should all welcome the proposals from the Architectural Association School of Architecture for their rooftop park plan above the existing Euston station.

Rather than wait for a decision on HS2, we should promote any initiative which will help to restore Euston as a thriving, diverse and vibrant community, (Rooftop park plan ‘will liberate Euston station from gloom surrounding HS2’, February 15).

The recent report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is an excoriating indictment of the financial mismanagement of HS2 by four prime ministers and seven chancellors over the past 10 years. As you reported, the Department for Transport have no response, save to disagree with the PAC’s financial assessment.

Last October PM Rishi Sunak announced that £6.5billion was to be taken out of the project for the Old Oak Common to Euston link. This would now be funded by private finance generated by a “Euston Development Zone”. He suggested this could generate “10,000 much needed homes”.

The PAC found that the government did not have, and does not yet have, any plan to achieve this. The PAC noted that more modest proposals for private sector investment had been rejected by the Treasury because of the risks involved.

The intention is clearly to create an elephant trap for Sir Keir Starmer and the next Labour government.

By March 2025 the cost of cancelling this now unfunded scheme will be all the greater.

There is no prospect that the Conservative party will devise any realistic financial proposal for bringing HS2 to Euston in the last days of this dying government.

Its objective is to push any decision on the funding gap past the general election. Equally, there is no real prospect that the Labour Party will make any unfunded financial commitment, given the parlous state of the public finances that it will inherit.

In 2015, local residents were told that HS2 would arrive in Euston by 2026. We are now told that the earliest that an HS2 train could arrive in Euston is 2031. As with any delay, the costs will increase.

In reality, local residents and businesses will face further delays while the debate continues as to whether HS2 could, or should, be brought into Euston.

If HS2 is to be scaled back at Euston, and land is to be released, the priority must be on replacing the trees, gardens and social housing that have been lost.

ROBERT LATHAM, NW1