Planning applications jump fourfold along course of HS2

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The HS2 line between London and Birmingham has led to a fourfold increase in planning applications for homes, office and commercial buildings around the railway’s new stations in the West Midlands, according to analysis by HS2 Ltd, the state-owned body running the project.

HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport are at pains to show the project has benefits after criticism earlier this month by a cross-party committee of MPs who said it offered “very poor value” for money and was suffering from a “failure of governance and oversight”.

Their research found that since the project was greenlighted in 2017 planning applications in a 1.5 mile radius of HS2’s new stations and depot in the West Midlands rose by 66 per cent compared with just 15 per cent in the areas immediately outside.

Sir John Thompson, the executive chair of HS2 Ltd, accused the project’s detractors of relying on “anecdotal evidence” when assessing the true value of the 140-mile line, which includes four new stations.

Although the cost of the London to Birmingham line has spiralled to £67bn in today’s prices — more than double the original £32.7bn cost of the entire line from London to Leeds and Manchester — Thompson said it was delivering increased long term prosperity.

“HS2 is a project of phenomenal scale and ambition,” Thompson wrote in the foreword to the report, adding that it would create “a legacy of world-leading industry, reimagined public spaces and international investment that will be felt for generations”.

The analysis of the impact in areas within a 1.5 mile radius of two new HS2 stations in central Birmingham and Solihull and a depot at Washwood Heath, found that planning applications were up by two-thirds and the number of residential homes had increased fivefold, with 55,000 planned since 2017, compared with fewer than 10,000…