HIGH SPEED RAIL
HS2 boss resigns amid speculation of further cuts
Neil Lancefield, PA Transport Correspondent
Fri, 29 September 2023
HS2 Ltd boss Mark Thurston leaves his role on Friday amid speculation the high-speed rail project will be cut further.
The 56-year-old, whose pay package was worth £677,000 in the last financial year, announced his resignation in July.
There has been widespread speculation in recent days that Prime Minister Risi Sunak is preparing to either scrap or delay HS2’s Birmingham to Manchester leg after being warned the price tag for the whole project may have soared past £100 billion.
The Government has already axed the Leeds leg.
The first estimate in 2010 for the high-speed railway between London and the North was £30 billion.
Mr Thurston is HS2 Ltd’s longest serving chief executive, taking on the role six and a half years ago.
When he announced he was stepping down, he said someone else should take over as the project transitions from construction to a “defining period” involving the installation of railway systems, such as track and signalling equipment.
The process for recruiting Mr Thurston’s successor has started.
HS2 Ltd chairman Sir Jon Thompson will become executive chairman for an interim period until a new chief executive is in place.
Sunak and Hunt can’t play shocked at HS2’s cost overruns
Nils Pratley
HS2 boss resigns amid speculation of further cuts
Neil Lancefield, PA Transport Correspondent
Fri, 29 September 2023
HS2 Ltd boss Mark Thurston leaves his role on Friday amid speculation the high-speed rail project will be cut further.
The 56-year-old, whose pay package was worth £677,000 in the last financial year, announced his resignation in July.
There has been widespread speculation in recent days that Prime Minister Risi Sunak is preparing to either scrap or delay HS2’s Birmingham to Manchester leg after being warned the price tag for the whole project may have soared past £100 billion.
The Government has already axed the Leeds leg.
The first estimate in 2010 for the high-speed railway between London and the North was £30 billion.
Mr Thurston is HS2 Ltd’s longest serving chief executive, taking on the role six and a half years ago.
When he announced he was stepping down, he said someone else should take over as the project transitions from construction to a “defining period” involving the installation of railway systems, such as track and signalling equipment.
The process for recruiting Mr Thurston’s successor has started.
HS2 Ltd chairman Sir Jon Thompson will become executive chairman for an interim period until a new chief executive is in place.
HS2 staff paid more than double national average wage, accounts show
Jack Simpson
Fri, 29 September 2023
HS2 advertising board
The average HS2 staff member is paid more than double the UK’s national average wage, the rail body’s accounts show.
According to its latest annual report, the median salary for all of HS2’s 2,000 staff members was £67,687, which crept up to £71,232 when benefits were included.
This is more than double the median annual wage for the UK, with the average UK worker receiving just over £33,000 a year.
The revelations come as the second phase of the HS2 line faces the axe amid ballooning costs.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was considering axing the line from Birmingham to Manchester, after more than £8bn was added to the costs of the line.
The latest figures on HS2’s staff spend will do little to extinguish concerns around costs, with the report also revealing that 500 of the highest paid staff at HS2 receive salaries of more than £85,000. This increased to £94,500 when benefits were included.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the median yearly salary across the UK was £33,280 as of April 2022, from the most recent Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
Of these, more than 40 of HS2’s executives receive more than £150,000 a year. This includes Mark Thurston, HS2’s outgoing chief executive, who is the country’s highest paid civil servant who received up to £675,000 in 2022-23.
This included a £40,000 bonus across the year, which was received despite the organisation missing seven out of its 12 key performance targets in the year, including those around construction and costs. HS2 has stressed Mr Thurston’s bonus was not related to these targets.
£14m spent on salaries in August
Workforce data published by the Department for Transport on Friday revealed that HS2 spent more than £16m on staff in August, including £14m on salaries.
In a round of interviews yesterday with local media, Mr Sunak confirmed that he was currently considering the line’s value for money.
He also fuelled speculation around the axing of the line north of Birmingham by saying it would not be a betrayal to axe the line and ducking questions about the line.
Reports of the prime minister axing the line have received widespread backlash from trade bodies and politicians from across the political divide.
On Wednesday, Andy Street, Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, joined other Labour mayor’s to warn Mr Sunak against cutting the line. Mr Street said that the decision would undermine hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the West Midlands.
LMK Commenting on the level of salaries, a HS2 spokesperson said: “HS2 is Europe’s biggest infrastructure project.
“As such, it is necessary to employ people with the right level of expertise in highly skilled roles such as engineering, construction, station design and railway operations to deliver it successfully.
“Average salaries at HS2 Ltd increased by just 1.4% in the last year, which is considerably below the rate of inflation. Furthermore, executive salaries are signed off by the Department for Transport and Treasury, with overall remuneration levels being managed in line with the government’s public sector pay policy.”
Jack Simpson
Fri, 29 September 2023
HS2 advertising board
The average HS2 staff member is paid more than double the UK’s national average wage, the rail body’s accounts show.
According to its latest annual report, the median salary for all of HS2’s 2,000 staff members was £67,687, which crept up to £71,232 when benefits were included.
This is more than double the median annual wage for the UK, with the average UK worker receiving just over £33,000 a year.
The revelations come as the second phase of the HS2 line faces the axe amid ballooning costs.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was considering axing the line from Birmingham to Manchester, after more than £8bn was added to the costs of the line.
The latest figures on HS2’s staff spend will do little to extinguish concerns around costs, with the report also revealing that 500 of the highest paid staff at HS2 receive salaries of more than £85,000. This increased to £94,500 when benefits were included.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the median yearly salary across the UK was £33,280 as of April 2022, from the most recent Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
Of these, more than 40 of HS2’s executives receive more than £150,000 a year. This includes Mark Thurston, HS2’s outgoing chief executive, who is the country’s highest paid civil servant who received up to £675,000 in 2022-23.
This included a £40,000 bonus across the year, which was received despite the organisation missing seven out of its 12 key performance targets in the year, including those around construction and costs. HS2 has stressed Mr Thurston’s bonus was not related to these targets.
£14m spent on salaries in August
Workforce data published by the Department for Transport on Friday revealed that HS2 spent more than £16m on staff in August, including £14m on salaries.
In a round of interviews yesterday with local media, Mr Sunak confirmed that he was currently considering the line’s value for money.
He also fuelled speculation around the axing of the line north of Birmingham by saying it would not be a betrayal to axe the line and ducking questions about the line.
Reports of the prime minister axing the line have received widespread backlash from trade bodies and politicians from across the political divide.
On Wednesday, Andy Street, Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, joined other Labour mayor’s to warn Mr Sunak against cutting the line. Mr Street said that the decision would undermine hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the West Midlands.
LMK Commenting on the level of salaries, a HS2 spokesperson said: “HS2 is Europe’s biggest infrastructure project.
“As such, it is necessary to employ people with the right level of expertise in highly skilled roles such as engineering, construction, station design and railway operations to deliver it successfully.
“Average salaries at HS2 Ltd increased by just 1.4% in the last year, which is considerably below the rate of inflation. Furthermore, executive salaries are signed off by the Department for Transport and Treasury, with overall remuneration levels being managed in line with the government’s public sector pay policy.”
Nils Pratley
The Guardian
Thu, 28 September 2023
Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
One piece of political spin about HS2’s spiralling costs is nonsense: the idea that ministers have a right to be shocked by the numbers. HS2 Ltd, the body building the railway and new stations, may be “arm’s length” for shorthand purposes, but it is not some faraway entity operating beyond government scrutiny. Rather, it is tightly meshed to the Department for Transport (DfT), which is involved in all big planning and spending decisions.
So when the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, says costs are “getting totally out of control” – a reasonable analysis as the bill heads towards a grotesque £100bn – he should explain why the government is seemingly surprised. Whitehall insiders talk about HS2’s bosses behaving “like kids with the golden credit card” but that ignores the fact that there is an “open books” relationship with the DfT. The government sees the monthly credit card statements, as it were. And No 10, incidentally, signs off on the megabucks salaries (departing chief executive Mark Thurston got £676,000 last year) on appointment.
Allan Cook, who was chair of HS2 Ltd between 2018 and 2021, characterises the relationship between the DfT and the delivery body as “strong and close”. He adds that in his time “budget and expenditure was approved in all cases by the DfT and, in some cases, by the Treasury too at regular monthly meetings”.
That is as one would expect given the governance setup. The DfT owns HS2 Ltd and has a representative on the board in the person of the experienced Ian King, who was chief executive of BAE Systems for a decade until 2017. King is also lead non-executive director at the DfT.
When King and two other non-executives were appointed to HS2 in 2020, the transport secretary at the time, Grant Shapps, pitched the move as part of closer and stricter involvement by the government. “When we gave HS2 the go-ahead, we made a clear commitment to draw a line under past problems and to move forward with a strong grip of the project and a laser-like focus on cost control and transparency,” he said.
On the transparency front, the DfT’s project representatives (plus officials from the National Audit Office) attend meetings of HS2’s audit and risk assurance committee, says the annual report. Spending above £10m is understood to go through the Cabinet Office for formal approval. Financial communication with the outside world has still been dreadful, but that’s a different type of transparency. In terms of governance structure, HS2 does not lack political oversight.
To see how things can go spectacularly wrong in practice, though, read the report by the Public Accounts Committee from July on the shambles that has been the planning process for Euston, the proposed London site of the HS2 station. The first plan was rejected as unaffordable, the second one arrived as even more expensive (£4.8bn versus a budget of £2.2bn), so work has started on a third with on-the-ground activity “paused” in March for two years.
The committee aimed most of its jabs at the DfT. “Despite being eight years into planning the High Speed 2 station at Euston, the DfT still does not know what it is trying to achieve with the station and what sort of regeneration it will support,” said the opening sentence. And the last conclusion: “The department has not yet learned lessons from managing major rail programmes.”
Euston, remember, is a critical piece of the HS2 jigsaw. If high-speed trains are ever to run north of Birmingham, a new station has to be built because Old Oak Common’s six HS2 platforms are too few to service a fuller fast-speed network. If there is no HS2 at Euston, with 10 or 11 dedicated platforms, there can be no line to Manchester. It is astonishing that the DfT has still to reconcile the competing demands of Transport of London, the Greater London Authority and Camden council.
None of which is to say that HS2’s management hasn’t contributed to the overall mismanagement over the years. The whole project has been biased towards overoptimism on costs – and part of that bias was surely generated from inside. But HS2’s defenders are right that the operation builds what it is told to build and that ministers could see the numbers in as much detail as they wished once work began in earnest in 2020. That was also the year Rishi Sunak became chancellor. He cannot claim to have been kept in the dark about risks.
Thu, 28 September 2023
Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
One piece of political spin about HS2’s spiralling costs is nonsense: the idea that ministers have a right to be shocked by the numbers. HS2 Ltd, the body building the railway and new stations, may be “arm’s length” for shorthand purposes, but it is not some faraway entity operating beyond government scrutiny. Rather, it is tightly meshed to the Department for Transport (DfT), which is involved in all big planning and spending decisions.
So when the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, says costs are “getting totally out of control” – a reasonable analysis as the bill heads towards a grotesque £100bn – he should explain why the government is seemingly surprised. Whitehall insiders talk about HS2’s bosses behaving “like kids with the golden credit card” but that ignores the fact that there is an “open books” relationship with the DfT. The government sees the monthly credit card statements, as it were. And No 10, incidentally, signs off on the megabucks salaries (departing chief executive Mark Thurston got £676,000 last year) on appointment.
Allan Cook, who was chair of HS2 Ltd between 2018 and 2021, characterises the relationship between the DfT and the delivery body as “strong and close”. He adds that in his time “budget and expenditure was approved in all cases by the DfT and, in some cases, by the Treasury too at regular monthly meetings”.
That is as one would expect given the governance setup. The DfT owns HS2 Ltd and has a representative on the board in the person of the experienced Ian King, who was chief executive of BAE Systems for a decade until 2017. King is also lead non-executive director at the DfT.
When King and two other non-executives were appointed to HS2 in 2020, the transport secretary at the time, Grant Shapps, pitched the move as part of closer and stricter involvement by the government. “When we gave HS2 the go-ahead, we made a clear commitment to draw a line under past problems and to move forward with a strong grip of the project and a laser-like focus on cost control and transparency,” he said.
On the transparency front, the DfT’s project representatives (plus officials from the National Audit Office) attend meetings of HS2’s audit and risk assurance committee, says the annual report. Spending above £10m is understood to go through the Cabinet Office for formal approval. Financial communication with the outside world has still been dreadful, but that’s a different type of transparency. In terms of governance structure, HS2 does not lack political oversight.
To see how things can go spectacularly wrong in practice, though, read the report by the Public Accounts Committee from July on the shambles that has been the planning process for Euston, the proposed London site of the HS2 station. The first plan was rejected as unaffordable, the second one arrived as even more expensive (£4.8bn versus a budget of £2.2bn), so work has started on a third with on-the-ground activity “paused” in March for two years.
The committee aimed most of its jabs at the DfT. “Despite being eight years into planning the High Speed 2 station at Euston, the DfT still does not know what it is trying to achieve with the station and what sort of regeneration it will support,” said the opening sentence. And the last conclusion: “The department has not yet learned lessons from managing major rail programmes.”
Euston, remember, is a critical piece of the HS2 jigsaw. If high-speed trains are ever to run north of Birmingham, a new station has to be built because Old Oak Common’s six HS2 platforms are too few to service a fuller fast-speed network. If there is no HS2 at Euston, with 10 or 11 dedicated platforms, there can be no line to Manchester. It is astonishing that the DfT has still to reconcile the competing demands of Transport of London, the Greater London Authority and Camden council.
None of which is to say that HS2’s management hasn’t contributed to the overall mismanagement over the years. The whole project has been biased towards overoptimism on costs – and part of that bias was surely generated from inside. But HS2’s defenders are right that the operation builds what it is told to build and that ministers could see the numbers in as much detail as they wished once work began in earnest in 2020. That was also the year Rishi Sunak became chancellor. He cannot claim to have been kept in the dark about risks.
Axing HS2 extension would be bad for Britain, says Hitachi Europe boss
Matt Oliver
Sat, 30 September 2023
Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, says completing the full route from Euston to Manchester is ‘absolutely vital’ - Eddie Mulholland
Scaling back the troubled HS2 rail project “is not the right thing to do” and will make it harder for Britain to cut its carbon emissions, a top executive of Japanese manufacturing giant Hitachi has claimed.
Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, said the main benefits of the troubled scheme would only be realised if the line runs all the way into London and on to northern cities such as Manchester.
He added that high-speed rail services needed to become an attractive and credible alternative to domestic air travel if Britain is to successfully reduce its carbon footprint.
Hitachi has been awarded a £2bn joint contract with French train manufacturer Alstom to build and maintain the fleet of 52 trains that will eventually run on the HS2 network.
They will be partly based on Japan’s Shinkansen “bullet trains” – which Hitachi is involved in making – and have a top speed of 225mph.
Hitachi is also in the running to supply signalling infrastructure.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Barr said: “We should be getting on with it [HS2].
“The southern end is a key part of that, but you can only really enhance it by continuing to extend the network [into the North].”
His comments come as Rishi Sunak is weighing plans to scrap the northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester and have the line terminate in the West London suburb of Old Oak Common – instead of Euston – to save money.
This has the potential to cause problems, Mr Barr warns, as Old Oak Common “isn’t set up to manage the volume of people that you’re going to have”.
The proposals, which Downing Street has not denied, face opposition from senior Tories as well as major businesses. The Government insists no decisions have been made.
HS2 was originally approved as a Y-shaped route going from London to Birmingham and then on to Manchester and Leeds, with a price tag of around £30bn.
But the cost has since ballooned officially to £45bn just for the London to Birmingham section alone.
The PM is said to be alarmed by Whitehall estimates that the entire scheme could now breach the £100bn mark.
Speaking this week at Hitachi’s European headquarters in Slough, Mr Barr highlighted the benefits of high-speed rail on the Continent, where it is much more widespread.
The executive, who previously ran Hitachi’s trains division, said HS2 would also deliver a much-needed boost to rail capacity – including commercial freight.
“HS2 isn’t all about getting people from London to Birmingham more quickly, it’s also capacity increases – particularly on the West Coast Mainline, which is a main corridor for container traffic,” he said.
“Moving some of that passenger traffic creates extra capacity for [container traffic] and commuting.”
Completing the full route from Euston to Manchester was “absolutely vital to enable that to happen”, he added.
At the same time, he argued HS2 should be just the start of a national high-speed network stretching to Scotland, which would allow Brits to eschew flying.
The independent Climate Change Committee has said more domestic travel by train is key to aviation emissions hitting net zero by 2050.
“I’d love to see a situation where it actually replaces domestic air travel,” Mr Barr said. “It’s right from a sustainability point of view and I think it’s the right thing to do.
“If you look at Italy, which is the classic case, they’ve invested heavily in high-speed rail and it’s now a very credible alternative to air.”
He added that the rollout of digital technology, electrification and soon batteries will revolutionise the way railways are run, making them more efficient, easier to maintain and cheaper to expand without costly infrastructure.
For example, Hitachi is trialling intercity trains in Italy which can switch between using overhead electric wires and battery packs for power – removing the need to rely on a diesel motor.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Great Western Main Line is testing sensors mounted on trains that can detect track problems by monitoring tiny bumps absorbed by the suspension.
This could allow engineers to make repairs before serious problems develop, while potentially removing the need for Network Rail to run its yellow track monitoring trains as often.
Greater digitisation of signalling and other train infrastructure will eventually allow small numbers of staff at rail operators to run entire networks remotely from one control room. “It’s a bit of a game-changer,” Mr Barr added.
Developing software that can manage these types of complex systems, along with the hardware that powers them, is a growing line of business for Hitachi – a once-sprawling conglomerate that slimlined its offering after posting the biggest-ever loss by a Japanese manufacturer (787.3 billion yen, about £6.55bn at the time) during the financial crisis.
The company now concentrates on green energy and mobility, digital services and industrial machinery. In 2022, it reported sales of 10.9 trillion yen (£60bn) and profits of about 671 billion yen (£4bn).
Though his background is originally in rail, Mr Barr now represents all of these Hitachi divisions in Europe. Energy is shaping up to be a significant boon, as the Continent scrambles to switch to renewables and ditch Russian gas.
Hitachi’s speciality is huge transformers and high-voltage cables.
It built the North Sea Link interconnector between the UK and Norway and its future projects include the link between mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands and the subsea cables that will bring power ashore from the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, off the coast of Yorkshire.
Hitachi was also once among the firms driving Britain’s nuclear power renaissance, with plans for projects in Wylfa, on the island of Anglesey, north Wales, and Oldbury, South Gloucestershire, but dropped proposals several years ago after failing to secure government funding.
Asked whether Hitachi would look at large-scale nuclear power again in the UK, Mr Barr said: “Unlikely. We still own those two sites though, and my view is that we need to release them to the industry for the best use.”
However, the company is a minority shareholder in a joint nuclear venture with General Electric, which has developed designs for a small modular reactor and is among those expected to enter a government competition for funding.
Separately, Hitachi is testing the use of green hydrogen in backup generators that could be used by data centres, many of which currently fall back on diesel.
Yet perhaps the most untapped potential, Mr Barr said, lies in digitising more services across both energy and transport.
In Italy, Hitachi is trialling bluetooth technology that could allow customers to automatically pay for bus and train tickets with their phones by simply stepping aboard public transport – rather than having to buy physical stubs or tap in using plastic cards.
“I’ve got a bugbear about buying a train ticket when you go to a station,” Mr Barr said. “You queue up at a machine to get a bit of card to prove you paid the money. It’s bonkers.
“Everyone’s got a smartphone in their pocket that could do that. So why don’t we?”
If they ever get to build it, perhaps it’s a suggestion the HS2 bosses can take up.
Matt Oliver
Sat, 30 September 2023
Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, says completing the full route from Euston to Manchester is ‘absolutely vital’ - Eddie Mulholland
Scaling back the troubled HS2 rail project “is not the right thing to do” and will make it harder for Britain to cut its carbon emissions, a top executive of Japanese manufacturing giant Hitachi has claimed.
Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, said the main benefits of the troubled scheme would only be realised if the line runs all the way into London and on to northern cities such as Manchester.
He added that high-speed rail services needed to become an attractive and credible alternative to domestic air travel if Britain is to successfully reduce its carbon footprint.
Hitachi has been awarded a £2bn joint contract with French train manufacturer Alstom to build and maintain the fleet of 52 trains that will eventually run on the HS2 network.
They will be partly based on Japan’s Shinkansen “bullet trains” – which Hitachi is involved in making – and have a top speed of 225mph.
Hitachi is also in the running to supply signalling infrastructure.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Barr said: “We should be getting on with it [HS2].
“The southern end is a key part of that, but you can only really enhance it by continuing to extend the network [into the North].”
His comments come as Rishi Sunak is weighing plans to scrap the northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester and have the line terminate in the West London suburb of Old Oak Common – instead of Euston – to save money.
This has the potential to cause problems, Mr Barr warns, as Old Oak Common “isn’t set up to manage the volume of people that you’re going to have”.
The proposals, which Downing Street has not denied, face opposition from senior Tories as well as major businesses. The Government insists no decisions have been made.
HS2 was originally approved as a Y-shaped route going from London to Birmingham and then on to Manchester and Leeds, with a price tag of around £30bn.
But the cost has since ballooned officially to £45bn just for the London to Birmingham section alone.
The PM is said to be alarmed by Whitehall estimates that the entire scheme could now breach the £100bn mark.
Speaking this week at Hitachi’s European headquarters in Slough, Mr Barr highlighted the benefits of high-speed rail on the Continent, where it is much more widespread.
The executive, who previously ran Hitachi’s trains division, said HS2 would also deliver a much-needed boost to rail capacity – including commercial freight.
“HS2 isn’t all about getting people from London to Birmingham more quickly, it’s also capacity increases – particularly on the West Coast Mainline, which is a main corridor for container traffic,” he said.
“Moving some of that passenger traffic creates extra capacity for [container traffic] and commuting.”
Completing the full route from Euston to Manchester was “absolutely vital to enable that to happen”, he added.
At the same time, he argued HS2 should be just the start of a national high-speed network stretching to Scotland, which would allow Brits to eschew flying.
The independent Climate Change Committee has said more domestic travel by train is key to aviation emissions hitting net zero by 2050.
“I’d love to see a situation where it actually replaces domestic air travel,” Mr Barr said. “It’s right from a sustainability point of view and I think it’s the right thing to do.
“If you look at Italy, which is the classic case, they’ve invested heavily in high-speed rail and it’s now a very credible alternative to air.”
He added that the rollout of digital technology, electrification and soon batteries will revolutionise the way railways are run, making them more efficient, easier to maintain and cheaper to expand without costly infrastructure.
For example, Hitachi is trialling intercity trains in Italy which can switch between using overhead electric wires and battery packs for power – removing the need to rely on a diesel motor.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Great Western Main Line is testing sensors mounted on trains that can detect track problems by monitoring tiny bumps absorbed by the suspension.
This could allow engineers to make repairs before serious problems develop, while potentially removing the need for Network Rail to run its yellow track monitoring trains as often.
Greater digitisation of signalling and other train infrastructure will eventually allow small numbers of staff at rail operators to run entire networks remotely from one control room. “It’s a bit of a game-changer,” Mr Barr added.
Developing software that can manage these types of complex systems, along with the hardware that powers them, is a growing line of business for Hitachi – a once-sprawling conglomerate that slimlined its offering after posting the biggest-ever loss by a Japanese manufacturer (787.3 billion yen, about £6.55bn at the time) during the financial crisis.
The company now concentrates on green energy and mobility, digital services and industrial machinery. In 2022, it reported sales of 10.9 trillion yen (£60bn) and profits of about 671 billion yen (£4bn).
Though his background is originally in rail, Mr Barr now represents all of these Hitachi divisions in Europe. Energy is shaping up to be a significant boon, as the Continent scrambles to switch to renewables and ditch Russian gas.
Hitachi’s speciality is huge transformers and high-voltage cables.
It built the North Sea Link interconnector between the UK and Norway and its future projects include the link between mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands and the subsea cables that will bring power ashore from the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, off the coast of Yorkshire.
Hitachi was also once among the firms driving Britain’s nuclear power renaissance, with plans for projects in Wylfa, on the island of Anglesey, north Wales, and Oldbury, South Gloucestershire, but dropped proposals several years ago after failing to secure government funding.
Asked whether Hitachi would look at large-scale nuclear power again in the UK, Mr Barr said: “Unlikely. We still own those two sites though, and my view is that we need to release them to the industry for the best use.”
However, the company is a minority shareholder in a joint nuclear venture with General Electric, which has developed designs for a small modular reactor and is among those expected to enter a government competition for funding.
Separately, Hitachi is testing the use of green hydrogen in backup generators that could be used by data centres, many of which currently fall back on diesel.
Yet perhaps the most untapped potential, Mr Barr said, lies in digitising more services across both energy and transport.
In Italy, Hitachi is trialling bluetooth technology that could allow customers to automatically pay for bus and train tickets with their phones by simply stepping aboard public transport – rather than having to buy physical stubs or tap in using plastic cards.
“I’ve got a bugbear about buying a train ticket when you go to a station,” Mr Barr said. “You queue up at a machine to get a bit of card to prove you paid the money. It’s bonkers.
“Everyone’s got a smartphone in their pocket that could do that. So why don’t we?”
If they ever get to build it, perhaps it’s a suggestion the HS2 bosses can take up.
