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Two former senior members of staff claim that they were sacked after they sought to reveal the true property costs of the project
Lauded by Boris Johnson as the “spine” of a new transport network to fix what he diagnosed as “the great musculoskeletal problem of UK transport”, High Speed Two (HS2) is the Government’s flagship rail infrastructure project, aiming to build a new line connecting London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
In 2018, the independent spending watchdog – the National Audit Office – noted that, in order to build its first phase, between London and Birmingham, “the Government will need to acquire approximately 70 square kilometres of land along the route of the railway”.
It said that “HS2 estimates that it will have to compensate between 6,000 and 10,000 claimants who have land and property interests affected by the route, including property owners, leaseholders and tenants”. HS2 said it would be required to issue up to 50,000 compulsory purchase notices – orders that allow authorities to purchase a property if it obstructs any development or infrastructure project that benefits the ‘greater public good’.
However, in this special investigation, Byline Times can reveal more claims about what unfolded in HS2 from November 2015 to April 2016, as the scheme progressed through Parliament. According to its former head of property planning and performance Andrew Bruce, this period was marked a conscious suppression of reality and a contortion of the truth designed to secure parliamentary approval for the controversial rail scheme.
HS2’s core land budget was therefore based on little more than a £35,000 very rough and incomplete estimate of likely land costs
Doug Thornton, former land and property director, HS2 Ltd
Byline Times has seen a signed affidavit given by Bruce in August 2019, detailing his experiences working for HS2 Limited – the Government-funded private company that is tasked with delivering the railway.
A former Lieutenant Colonel, his work in Iraq and Afghanistan did not fully prepare him for the personal battle that he faced on domestic soil beginning in 2015, overseeing one of the largest property acquisition exercises in British history, and attempting to deliver a historic new railway line.
Enter: Andrew Bruce
April 2004 witnessed the bloodiest battle in the Iraq War: the Second Battle of Fallujah – a six-week siege on the city located roughly 70 kilometres west of Baghdad, flanking the Euphrates River. The offensive was a three-way collaboration between American, Iraqi-Government and British forces. From these troops, 107 were killed and 613 wounded.
The British presence in Iraq was largely based out of the southern city of Basra and, while American forces represented the majority of military combatants, British personnel provided a steadying influence in the campaign to build a post-Saddam Hussein state.
Key to this effort was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Bruce – a senior military commander who had served in Kenya, Cyprus, Germany and the US.
While working as a senior military staff officer in the Scottish Brigade Headquarters in 2005, Bruce was seconded to southern Iraq as the director of construction and logistics. These were crucial early stages for the new country – which had been ruled by the authoritarian Hussein from 1979 until his death in 2003 – and for the ongoing military operation.
During his year at the helm, Bruce delivered more than 300 projects for the Iraqi army, police and border agency. In total, he procured, delivered and distributed nine million items of equipment worth some £300 million.
He returned to the Middle East as NATO’s chief engineer in southern Afghanistan in 2010, leading a workforce of 8,500 people from 17 nations, and then served as chief engineer in south-west Afghanistan from 2013 to 2015.
Two months earlier, he had been headhunted – offered the role of head of property planning and performance for HS2. While the role did not have the kudos of a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, Bruce was relishing the task ahead.
But then reality hit.
Blacklisting the Black Hole
The first matter of concern for Bruce was a report by the management consultancy firm Deloitte, which had exposed holes in HS2’s property operation.
The report noted that Bruce’s team “did not have sufficient resources, capacity or capability” to carry out its future work effectively. It also said that the existing Property Cost Estimate (PCE) – essentially the value of land and properties that HS2 expected to buy along the route – required a significant re-work.
The Deloitte report followed a review conducted by the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in March 2015, which came to similar conclusions.
“This is a model and not actual individual property cost estimates,” the Deloitte report, seen by Byline Times, states. It said that there was a risk that properties “have been undervalued” and “information may be outdated”. In order to achieve the necessary detail and accuracy for parliamentary approval, Deloitte recommended an “additional, concerted and coordinated effort” to update the PCE.
According to Doug Thornton – who for a short time acted as Bruce’s director – a rough, abridged PCE was first produced by a consultancy firm in 2009. HS2 only paid £35,000 for this report and an update in 2011 – which was written in large part by interns, Thornton claims. These calculations, with subsequent revisions – notably in 2013 – essentially served as the basis of HS2’s property cost estimate until the hiring of Bruce in November 2015. This is confirmed by the NAO’s 2018 report.
“HS2’s core land budget was therefore based on little more than a £35,000 very rough and incomplete estimate of likely land costs,” Thornton states, in an affidavit provided alongside Bruce’s.
Bruce claims that he used Deloitte’s recommendations to build an action plan – both for bolstering his workforce and improving the deficient cost estimate. However, Thornton was removed from his position over the Christmas period, and the first action of Bruce’s new boss was to blacklist the Deloitte report.
He “ordered all copies of the Deloitte report… to be removed from the HS2 office,” Bruce states, “Physical copies were gathered up and placed in the bins marked for shredding. Staff were instructed to delete any electronic copies”.
Bruce was given four days to develop a new plan of action without any assistance, he says. According to Bruce, the original docum