Hints and tips:
...A new high-speed rail line will now only be built from London to Birmingham, with HS2’s custom-built trains shifting on to existing tracks the rest of the way to the north of England....
...The transport department said in a statement that HS2’s “governance [was] being strengthened to further increase the focus on cost control and increase government oversight”....
...In October, the Financial Times reported that the Treasury had asked HS2’s management team to identify potential cuts or “scope reductions” to the high-speed line....
...More than half of Thames Water’s debt is index-linked, according to rating agency S&P, burdening it with higher interest repayments as inflation soared over the past 18 months.The utility may also face large...
...It also criticised HS2’s decision to continue to record costs in 2019 prices as this meant none of the figures reflected “what has been or is being paid”....
...Dame Meg Hillier MP, the committee chair, said: “Here we are after over a decade of our warnings on HS2’s management and spiralling costs — locked into the costly completion of a curtailed rump of a project...
...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...
...In a statement on Wednesday, rail minister Huw Merriman said HS2’s management had increased the upper estimate for the project to £57bn in 2019 prices....
...Although interest rate pressures have reduced slightly in recent months, rating agency S&P has a negative outlook or credit watch on three-quarters of water company ratings....
...Sunak said the government would shift £36bn planned for HS2’s northern leg to other road, rail and bus projects which would give people in the north of England and Midlands “significant improvements to the...
...HS2’s burn rate means it is scheduled to consume more expenditure per year than the Highways Agency’s renewals programme for the national road network or Network Rail’s capital programme on an annualised...
...“For the poorest countries, debt has become a near paralysing burden,” said Gill....
...A number of the rail projects had been previously mooted by government, including in 2021’s Integrated Rail Plan, but the funding had not been committed....
...HS2’s price tag has more than doubled from the original budget of £33bn a decade ago when the line was originally envisaged to run from London to Birmingham before splitting into two sections to Manchester...
...The debate over HS2’s northern leg had become about “Britain’s ability to do the tough stuff successfully”, he said, and its “credibility as a place to invest”. “That’s what’s now at stake,” he added....
Government did ‘not know what the additional costs would be from decision to pause Euston construction, MPs’ report says
...But they cautioned that applying a single indice to the headline figure did not account for the differing inflation pressures on HS2’s various input costs....
...In November, credit agency S&P Global revised its outlook on Yorkshire Water’s debt to negative because of “operating and financing cost pressure”. DWS and GIC declined to comment....
...S&P, the rating agency, has negative outlooks for two-thirds of the UK water companies it rates — indicating the possibility of downgrades as the result of weaker financial resilience....
...Additional reporting by Gill Plimmer...
...Frank Gill, sovereign specialist for Europe, Middle East and Africa at S&P Global Ratings, said he expected European countries to step up their issuance of bonds targeted at retail investors....
...T S Eliot. Poet, essayist, critic and playwright. A brilliant, if flawed, polymath but, perhaps fortunately, no food writer. Nowhere near enough adjectives for a start....
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