Thread by @Dan4Barnet

Why can’t Britain build anything anymore?

The news this week of the £100m ‘bat tunnel’ gave us some clues.

Here’s the story of this tunnel, which has been 12 years in the making, and some thoughts on what it tells us

Background: The tunnel is a 1km concrete and mesh structure, to protect bats from HS2 trains.

It was planned from early on in HS2’s life – the Sheephouse Wood (Bat) Mitigation Structure (SWBMS) features in these 2016 plans:

Sometimes, it would seem, British infrastructure can be painstakingly designed.

Strikingly, HS2 details how 17 different options for the bat tunnel (with sub-options) were considered over a 10-year period:

Now, maybe you agree that this is a good thing – being thorough means we get it right in the end.

But I’d contend that it’s a sign that something is broken. We could do things quickly and well, but we choose to do them slowly.

Part of the reason things take so long is that there’s lots of perspectives to consider.

Natural England’s advice must be considered and their position is clear: no bat death is acceptable. Hence, the need for the SWBMS in the first place.

But, Natural England aren’t the only players in town.

Buckinghamshire Council & residents have a say too, required by the HS2 Act.

Residents were consulted on the shading of the mesh and other aspects of the scheme.

This 2022 consultation was all in the hope of convincing Buckinghamshire Council to approve the SWBMS.

But the Council had other ideas and engaged in a power play in March 2023 by issuing a ‘Tree Preservation Order’, stopping some of the works required to get the site ready for the tunnel:

I’m not sure how much more work HS2 were able to do in the rest of 2023, but you can imagine that TPO put the dampeners on progress. Timelines reviewed, staff redeployed, budgets re-profiled.

Despite the new trees and planting committed to in the image below:

So even though Natural England and other consultees were supporting the tunnel, the council remained strongly opposed and was blocking it from progressing throughout 2023.

Eventually HS2 appealed to the Planning Inspector and in late-January this year were finally given the go-ahead.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65e1b592…

Many consultees. Blockers given effective veto power. Leading to lengthy design processes and a 1km structure first envisioned in 2012 taking until 2024 to get built.

The £100m bat tunnel is a feature, not a bug, of the system the Conservatives – who were once in favour of a more nimble, pro-growth, state – designed and maintained.

It’s worth noting that Bucks Council argued to the Planning Inspector that HS2 provided insufficient detail on the environmental impact of the scheme.

That’s despite HS2 providing a 111-page Environmental Assessment Summary Paper.

To be clear – I'm in favour of protecting the environment and our wildlife. But it is certainly not clear that this is best achieved, at best value for money, by this process.

The Council waved away the hours of work that went into the Environment Assessment, and who actually did read it?

And, although I'm sure its contested, I also note that the boss of HS2 said: “No evidence, by the way, that high-speed trains interfere with bats.”

But it’s not just the bat tunnel, or just HS2, but a broader problem with our planning system which is blocking the infrastructure and energy we need.

In his speech at October’s Investment Summit, Keir Starmer called out the East Anglia 2 wind farm as another example.

A project where regulators demanded over 4000 planning documents for approval.

And then – once planning consent had finally been provided – a judicial review was allowed to hold up progress for a further two years.

So we can see why we struggle to get anything built in this country.

And why, when we do, it comes at far too great a cost.

This must change, as the PM said, “it’s time to upgrade the regulatory regime…We will rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment…[we are] determined to get Britain building”.

And why does this matter? Because if we can’t build, we can’t grow our economy and all of us will continue to suffer.

Workers are £10,700 *a year* worse off than if wages had grown in-line with pre-financial crisis trends.

As I said in the Budget debate, we can move on from a politics of scarcity to one of abundance.

It’s time to end decline and invest in our future again.

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