Understand
BBC Radio 4
NEW in Understand - Derailed: The Story of HS2Over 10 episodes, Kate Lamble starts from the beginning, and uncovers the real inside story behind the journey of HS2. From the railwaymen who dreamed it up, through the political crises and politicians who shaped it, the fight to halt it and the mistakes that came to define it.High Speed Two is the remarkably matter of fact name for Europe's largest infrastructure project. The rail project that started life in 2009 promised to join up London and Birmingham, before splitting into two legs towards Manchester and Leeds. It was a straight line that would send trains whizzing at over 200 miles an hour through the British countryside, with a new train leaving London every few minutes. A massive enterprise that would ease the critical pressure on the West Coast Mainline, and become the envy of the world - a watch word for innovation and ambition.
16 years on, and that dream is in tatters. The two Northern legs have been cancelled, costs have spiralled into dizzying territory and it remains uncertain if and when any trains will ever be running. Environmental groups are furious, with complaints that construction has devastated woodlands and habitats. So too, are local communities, with small villages and family farms bearing the brunt of a programme of compulsory purchases and countryside transformed into building sites.
As Prime Ministers and whole political eras came and went, HS2 stuck around as a great dilemma. But each round of scandal and protest was gradually chipping away until it became a shorthand for waste, inefficiency and short-sightedness.
So - what went wrong?
Kate hears from the people closest to the big decisions and the big impacts, from villages along the line to the levers of power inside HS2 and even Downing Street itself. And as she follows the twists and turns of HS2's tortured path, she explores the reality of why we struggle to build a better future.
Understand from BBC Radio 4 - unravelling the complexities of the biggest stories and subjects that really matter right now.
16 years on, and that dream is in tatters. The two Northern legs have been cancelled, costs have spiralled into dizzying territory and it remains uncertain if and when any trains will ever be running. Environmental groups are furious, with complaints that construction has devastated woodlands and habitats. So too, are local communities, with small villages and family farms bearing the brunt of a programme of compulsory purchases and countryside transformed into building sites.
As Prime Ministers and whole political eras came and went, HS2 stuck around as a great dilemma. But each round of scandal and protest was gradually chipping away until it became a shorthand for waste, inefficiency and short-sightedness.
So - what went wrong?
Kate hears from the people closest to the big decisions and the big impacts, from villages along the line to the levers of power inside HS2 and even Downing Street itself. And as she follows the twists and turns of HS2's tortured path, she explores the reality of why we struggle to build a better future.
Understand from BBC Radio 4 - unravelling the complexities of the biggest stories and subjects that really matter right now.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jul 30, 2025 • 3min
The Trip: Introducing The Trip
During the early weeks of the pandemic, Tim Hayward spent 14 days in a coma. He remembers this time vividly – his days and nights filled with strange, incandescent visions and hallucinations. That experience is something he would never choose to revisit but, around the world, large numbers of people are deliberately seeking out powerfully altered states.In this ten-part series, Tim sets out to better understand a group of substances that induce altered states: psychedelics.There’s been a surge of interest in their therapeutic potential for various mental health conditions - as well as a range of other clinical possibilities. As research around the world ramps up after years of taboo and prohibition he tries to get to grips with - or at least get a clearer sense of - how science, culture, politics and business might all interact in this changing psychedelic landscape, and what it all might mean.Presenter: Tim Hayward
Producer: Richard Ward
Executive Producer: Rosamund Jones
Editor: Kirsten Lass
Written by Tim Hayward and Richard Ward
Sound Design and Mixing: Richard Ward
Researcher: Grace Revill
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 21, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 10. The Bear Trap
The new government is trying to get a grip of HS2, with yet another reset. Kate challenges the new minister, Lord Hendy, on the project’s future and also considers the legacy of HS2. Will Britain ever attempt something like it again? And will its image transform again once trains are actually, finally running?Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 21, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 9. You Can Do One
The arrival of Rishi Sunak in Downing Street revived the hopes of those who wanted to see HS2 cancelled entirely. One leg - to Leeds - had already been chipped away. And on the eve of the Tory party conference in Manchester, Rishi Sunak was persuaded to announce that that city would not now get HS2 either, in the face of intense resistance from the mayors of both Birmingham and Manchester itself. Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 21, 2025 • 14min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 8. Help I’m Under a Digger
After successfully defeating a number of fracking projects, a wave of hardened environmentalists join the anti-HS2 protest movement. Locking themselves to fences and ancient trees, civil disobedience arrived at the frontline of building sites. But injunctions and evictions clear the protest camps, and the added cost is a drop in HS2’s very large bucket. The bigger threat to HS2’s national image arrived in the unlikely form of a notorious environmental mitigation: the Sheephouse Wood Bat Mitigation Structure - or as it’s better known, the Bat Tunnel.Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 21, 2025 • 14min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 7. Gold Plated
Costs began to truly spiral out of control. In search of the culprit, Kate goes through the mess HS2 made of some its largest contracts. Much of HS2 was being built by massive consortiums of engineering firms. A short lived effort to unload the project’s risk to these firms saw costs continue to rise beyond the original estimates. And, as the price increased, politicians faced further pressure to curtail the project.Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 21, 2025 • 14min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 6. The Only Friend that Mattered
Revelations about waste and delay have left HS2 in poor shape - and ripe, in the view of its political opponents, for cancellation. But, at the opportune moment, a new Prime Minister arrives. Boris Johnson saw HS2 as a cornerstone of his “levelling up” agenda, and gave it the green light to proceed even as the country wrestled with the emergency of a global pandemic.
Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 14, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 5. Worry About the Detail Later
As HS2 began the process of lining up land along its route for purchase, individuals within the team became deeply concerned. They feared that HS2 was wildly underestimating the eventual costs associated with acquiring the land, as well as the shortage of available specialists and the risks of unfairness to those forced to sell. And, they worried that HS2 was being too slow to reckon with the true price tag as it focused on getting political approval to move forward. Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie AdlingtonA Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 14, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 4. Well Done Geoffrey
To deal with the growing opposition, the government resolved to commit to HS2 by way of a hybrid bill, which would open up opportunities for local communities to object to the route. The original design became mired in hundreds of expensive mitigations, compromises and compensations. Cheaper above ground sections were replaced by costly tunnels. Cuttings and sound barriers began to line huge parts of the route. The project was progressing, but it would have to pay the piper before long.
Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 14, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 3. That can’t be right
As specific plans for HS2 were announced, protestors quickly sprang into action, forming campaigning groups and arguing for the line to be fundamentally re-thought. They saw HS2 as an industrial eyesore rammed through the heart of some of Britain’s most beautiful countryside. Communities all along the proposed line were staring down the barrel of massive disruption, from the compulsory purchase of family homes and farms, to the ruination of local ecosystems. A movement was forming, and beginning to define the project in the public eye.Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Jul 14, 2025 • 15min
Derailed: The Story of HS2: 2. Mutually assured exaggeration
As the designs for HS2 took shape, the new team behind it set out to prove its value to Ministers and MPs. But as Kate hears, long term flaws were being baked into the project, with an economic justification that centred on outdated assumptions. And, as the designers sought to make the justification, they adjusted the design - making it more expensive. The focus on speed was exciting - but it also distracted from the line’s real purpose. The initial vision was becoming more muddled by the minute.
Presenter: Kate Lamble
Producer: Robert Nicholson
Executive Producer: Will Yates
Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
