BUNGLING HS2 bosses have no clue how much taxpayers’ cash has been spent on luxury lodging for newts, The Sun can reveal.
Rail chiefs confessed they can’t even put a price on their “newt hotels” splurge – despite already blowing £100m on a bat tunnel.
HS2’s Deputy Chief Alan Foster admitted in a letter to MPs the project never required contractors to separate out the cost of their amphibian all-inclusives.
Furious Labour MP Luke Charters, who sits on the Public Accounts Committee, slammed the revelation, calling it a “farce”.
He told The Sun: “The idea that taxpayers are footing the bill for newts to go on an all-inclusive is an absolute joke.
“This Government is already cracking down on HS2 spending just nine months into office and fixing planning laws in the process.
“After wasting £100m on a bat tunnel and now building an unspecified number of newt hotels, it’s vital HS2 aren’t given any more leeway.”
HS2 has developed multiple “newt marinas” along its construction route to protect great crested newts, a legally protected species in the UK.
One of them is at Halse Copse, near Banbury in Oxfordshire, featuring five custom-built ponds, sunbathing banks for newts, and a chalet-style shelter for hibernation.
It comes after HS2 was exposed for splashing £100m on a tunnel for bats, with ministers now under pressure to find out what other wildlife freebies have been quietly buried in the budget.
In a damning report last month, the PAC said HS2 is an example of “how not to run a major project”.
The influential group of MPs said HS2 Ltd – the Government-owned company responsible for building the high-speed railway – and the Department for Transport have “failed to work together effectively”.
This is “starkly illustrated by their continued disagreement” over how much it will cost to build the line from London to the West Midlands, the report stated.
The DfT’s estimated range in November 2023 was £45 billion to £54 billion, while HS2 Ltd’s latest estimate in June 2024 was between £54 billion and £66 billion.
All these figures were in 2019 prices.
Once adjusted for inflation, the cost “might be close to £80 billion”, according to the report.
The PAC said: “The HS2 programme has become a casebook example of how not to run a major project.
“It is unacceptable that over a decade into the programme we still do not know what it will cost, what the final scope will be, when it will finally be completed or what benefits it will deliver.”
In October last year, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a plan to extend HS2 between the West Midlands and Manchester.
The planned leg to Leeds was axed in November 2021.
A previous review was carried out in 2020 because of escalating costs and delays.
The committee noted there are “significant risks” with the redevelopment of London’s Euston station.
The Government confirmed in October 2024 it would pay for tunnelling work to the station from Old Oak Common in the west London suburbs.
But it is “unclear how achievable” the DfT’s goal of Euston’s redevelopment being privately-funded is, the PAC said.
