Mark Reynolds adds that ‘railway has to go into central London for it to work’
Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds has added his voice to those calling for the HS2 railway to go into the middle of London as planned.
The station scheme at Euston has been mothballed for the next couple of years at least, leaving a vast empty site in the middle of the capital.
Ruling out putting a temporary alternative in its place, Reynolds, who yesterday helped launch a rejig of the Construction Leadership Council, the industry group he co-chairs, said: “You cannot leave Euston as it is to scar central London.”
He admitted the decision earlier this month to pare back work at the site will hit the group’s revenue – budgeted to be around £2.25bn this year – adding he would find out by how much in the next few weeks.
As Euston main contractor, Mace and Spanish joint venture partner Dragados had around 360 staff on the project before transport secretary Mark Harper hit the pause button on the scheme nearly three weeks ago.
More than 1,200 people were working on the job but this is being whittled down significantly in the wake of Harper’s announcement with just a skeleton staff left by the summer.
Reynolds said it was talking to HS2 about what to do next. “I think we’ll get a better idea of what’s happening in the coming few months. But it has to go into central London as a railway. The system doesn’t work without it going into Euston.”
Trains into the capital will initially terminate at Old Oak Common but platform capacity there is limited to six and experts have said the west London station will not be able to cope with the amount of trains traveling to and from Birmingham and beyond without building extra capacity at Euston.
Yesterday, a group of MPs from the Treasury select committee were given a tour of the site to see for themselves the impact of the mothballing a day after the National Audit Office said the cost of the scheme was now £4.8bn, up from its original budget of £2.6bn.
Meanwhile, Reynolds said the rejig at the CLC, which will focus on four long-term priorities to boost productivity and growth, was about the “industry stepping up and showing leadership”.
He added: “It’s about showing what we can do to help the industry and what can we do that others can’t.”
The makeover was launched with CLC co-chair, construction minister Nusrat Ghani. Reynolds said the CLC and wider industry was hoping there would now be some continuity with the construction brief at Whitehall. Ghani, appointed last November, was the fourth minister last year alone and Reynolds admitted: “We’ve always wanted stability and we’ve not really had that since last June.”
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