We don’t need HS2 for Toton master plan
WHATEVER your views are about the Toton Strategic Master Plan, one reality has remained mysteriously unmentioned from the outset – it could all be achieved without HS2. Every bit of it and more, and save the nation billions in the process.
The development of the Chetwynd Barracks and elsewhere, in simple terms, isn’t dependent upon HS2 at all, despite what some of the business bigwigs say.
Regenerating and developing this area is indeed ambitious, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the prospect of HS2’S proposed station hub at Toton.
To suggest so is to mislead, to repeat that well-worn mantra about how HS2 is going to “re-balance the economy” and, to quote the Chair of the Toton Delivery Board, “create a bright future for decades to come”.
Well, we all want a bright future of course. And it doesn’t need a train station to get one.
Each aspect of the Master Plan, the attraction of new businesses and technologies into an “innovation campus”, the development of new housing, a new green village (whatever that means) and all the trimmings are delicious prospects.
These are probably wonderfully inspired visions all polished up ready to become realities.
Realities that don’t need HS2 to manifest.
There remains no evidence supporting economic benefits to this region (or any other for that matter) arising from the arrival of HS2, yet, as is generally the case, we are fed the “once in a lifetime opportunity” nonsense, somehow pinning the hopes and aspirations for the future on a train station that nobody really needs or wants.
Anyone who is as boring as me and has studied HS2’S economics and business plan in fine detail for the last six years, will notice the same glaring flaws staring out.
For example, “regeneration” plays no part in HS2’S budget remit and never has done.
Any such projects will be at the behest of the local authorities (who have no money of course) and who are pressured by private sector-led gatherings such as Local Enterprise Partnerships and the flashily-named “Midlands Engine”.
A further mystery remains surrounding HS2. Why did it fail to attract private capital (which was the original plan back in 2009)?
The answer to that is shockingly obvious to anyone who has read (and understood) HS2’S business plan. It is entirely based on meaningless, complex assumptions, the primary reason why private capital wouldn’t touch it with a stick and why instead, the British taxpayer is left footing the bill. All of it.
In short, HS2’S economics wouldn’t get on the table in any boardroom in Britain, yet it has mesmerised our big thinkers and big spenders for over a decade. This is one of life’s mysteries.
Take the mystery – magic challenge; consider each part of the Toton Stategic Masterplan (the bits you like and don’t like) and then write down those bits that would be impossible if HS2 didn’t happen.
As if by magic, your sheet of paper remains completely, and mysteriously, blank.
David Briggs Kingston on Soar