Peer review: Jim Steer
Director, Steer Davies Gleave
If we needed reminding why HS2 isn’t like any other rail project, the very presence of Tom Kelly as HS2 Ltd’s Director of Strategic Communications is a pointer. They simply don’t come any more experienced in UK politics and negotiation.
His positions of respect for those affected by the project and recognition of the need to avoid complacency are borne, it would seem, from his years working behind the scenes on the Northern Ireland Peace Process. They are surely to be embraced.
I also liked his insistence on the need to keep up the flow of messages about why HS2 is so needed. Like him, I have found that one of the most effective devices is to invite consideration of what will most likely happen in its absence. As he says, a world without HS2 doesn’t come cost-free - we can all see damaging levels of congestion looming. With ORR reporting a year-on-year 9.4% increase in passengers at Euston, perhaps it is HS2 objectors’ complacency that needs to be challenged?
Listening to Tom Kelly’s take on the last 12 months or so begs the question of how much the shift in attitudes to HS2 is attributable to the appointment of Sir David Higgins. Who else would have had the insight and credibility to call for the creation of Transport for the North in his second report, adding that it should be tasked with producing a transport strategy for the North as a start of an overall national strategy? We have been fortunate to have Sir David as HS2 chairman at this crucial time, when the project and its wider ramifications are still at the ‘shaping’ stage.
The two Higgins reports this year (HS2 Plus and Rebalancing Britain) are, as Tom Kelly says, steps on a very long journey. No doubt - with Tom’s help - they have been run past Ministers before release. I don’t think further reports in the same vein are planned, so the question arises: how will further steps in the planning and delivery of HS2 be way-marked in a like manner, signalling important shifts and gaining renewed (cross-party) political support?
The recent report (Rebalancing Britain) was silent on the question of Euston, for which a review is under way with new senior leadership. Maybe the timing wasn’t right, but this is classic territory for Tom Kelly’s negotiating skills to come into play: dealing with tough budget constraints; with an anxious (if now engaged) local authority; concerns about the risk of years of disruption during the construction stage; the not-to-be-missed opportunity to fashion major surrounding redevelopment; the need somehow to make Euston and St Pancras work together for through passengers between HS1 and HS2; and dealing with the force that is the London Mayor and Transport for London.
Squaring opposing forces needs some Higgins-style strategic thinking. In this case, it also means looking overseas to see how the problem has been solved. There are no suburban trains at the buffer stops of Gare du Nord, just a line-up of high-speed trainsets. To build Euston on time and with disruption minimised, we need to take out as many suburban services as possible and provide them with (better) alternative destinations.
It can be done. We can use the planned Crossrail connection to the West Coast Main Line to achieve a similar outcome. This means services not only from Tring but also from Milton Keynes joining Crossrail, instead of taking up scarce space at Euston. And the Overground trains from Watford need to operate onwards to Camden Road and beyond, rather than add to terminal congestion.
It wouldn’t be too late for a new report on this subject in spring 2015. In fact, by then we’ll also have the outcome of the Davies Commission on Airports, so there is a real need for a southern dose of the new strategic thinking from the Higgins/Kelly team.
Tom notes the power of speaking with one voice, when he observes what’s happened in the North. We’re going to need the same for HS2 in the South, too, soon enough.
