Tracking five of the UK’s biggest infrastructure projects

1. Crossrail

Com­ple­tion date: first phase opens June 2022, stage two in autumn and stage three by May 2023

Orig­i­nal bud­get: £14.8bn

Final cost: £18.9bn

After being struck by delays and cost over­runs, Cross­rail is final­ly close to com­ple­tion. The first test run of close to 2,000 pas­sen­gers took place on the Eliz­a­beth line on Sun­day, tak­ing peo­ple between Padding­ton in the West of the city to Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion in rough­ly 10 min­utes.

The first phase of the under­ground route will open this sum­mer. Once stage three is com­plet­ed in 2023, it will take trav­ellers from Read­ing and Heathrow Air­port in the west to Shen­field in Essex and Abbey Wood in south­east Lon­don. The fin­ished route will go through a total of 41 sta­tions – ten of which are new – includ­ing Bond Street, Tot­ten­ham Court Road, Far­ring­don and Canary Wharf.

Cross­rail was orig­i­nal­ly approved in 2007 and con­struc­tion began in 2009, but the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic caused work to be paused for sev­er­al months in 2020. The project’s final costs are expect­ed to come in at rough­ly £18.9bn. That means it’s £4bn over bud­get, with the first trains run­ning four years lat­er than expect­ed. 

Tun­nelling pro­gressed at an aver­age pace of 38 metres a day to com­plete the 42km of new tun­nels that make up the Eliz­a­beth line. At the height of con­struc­tion, Cross­rail was the largest infra­struc­ture project in Europe. Cross­rail chief exec­u­tive Mark Wild claims that, when fin­ished, it will be “the most advanced rail­way” on the con­ti­nent too.

The new British Rail Class 345 trains were built by Bom­bardier Trans­porta­tion for use on the Cross­rail net­work; they are twice the length of reg­u­lar tube trains and can car­ry 1,500 pas­sen­gers at a time. An esti­mat­ed 200 mil­lion pas­sen­gers will be served by the new under­ground line each year. 

This was expect­ed to earn Trans­port for Lon­don (TfL) approx­i­mate­ly £500m per year in rev­enues in 2022/23 and over £1bn per year from 2024/25. How­ev­er, the long-term impact of the pan­dem­ic on work­ing pat­terns and use of pub­lic trans­port has caused TfL to revise these esti­mates to less than 60% of the pre-pan­dem­ic hopes.

2. Hinkley Point C

Com­ple­tion date: June 2026

Orig­i­nal bud­get: £18bn

Cur­rent esti­mat­ed cost: £23bn

Hink­ley Point C was one of eight new nuclear pow­er sta­tions announced by the gov­ern­ment in 2010 and is the only one under con­struc­tion. That means it will be the first new nuclear plant to open in the coun­try in more than 20 years.

Con­struc­tion of the project recent­ly gained fresh impe­tus, with the ener­gy price cri­sis and Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine caus­ing the UK gov­ern­ment to review its reliance on import­ed fos­sil fuels. The decom­mis­sion­ing of Hink­ley Point B, which is set to begin in July this year, adds to the project’s impor­tance.

Once it’s com­plet­ed, the 3.2 gigawatt nuclear pow­er sta­tion will gen­er­ate 7% of the UK’s total elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, pow­er­ing 6 mil­lion homes.

The lat­est ele­ment of con­struc­tion involved lift­ing a 347-tonne lin­er steel ring onto the reac­tor, which made the build­ing 17 metres taller. This was per­formed by ‘Big Carl’, a 250-metre tall super crane and the largest crane in the world. 

More than 22,000 peo­ple have worked on the erec­tion of the new nuclear pow­er sta­tion since shov­el was first put to soil in Sep­tem­ber 2016. Work on the infra­struc­ture project con­tin­ued through­out the pan­dem­ic, after a num­ber of social dis­tanc­ing and safe­ty mea­sures were put in place. 

 “Our abil­i­ty to main­tain progress in such tough cir­cum­stances is a tes­ta­ment to the com­mit­ment of the work­force and our sup­pli­ers across Britain and the world,” said Hink­ley Point C man­ag­ing direc­tor Stu­art Crooks. The pre­ci­sion involved in build­ing the site’s nuclear reac­tor units is like “watch­mak­ing on an indus­tri­al scale”, he said.

The infra­struc­ture project has met some delays along the way. Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion from unit 1 is expect­ed in June 2026 at the ear­li­est, a year lat­er than the orig­i­nal 2025 date. This has also increased the esti­mat­ed cost of the project by £500m, tak­ing the total to £23bn.

French ener­gy firm EDF remains the major­i­ty investor in Hink­ley Point C, with the Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Gen­er­al Nuclear (CGN) pay­ing £6bn for a 33% stake. CGN is expect­ed to remain a part­ner despite the British government’s deci­sion to reduce China’s involve­ment in UK infra­struc­ture projects. The dete­ri­o­ra­tion of diplo­mat­ic rela­tions between the two coun­tries has seen the gov­ern­ment seek new investors for its oth­er nuclear projects, includ­ing Sizewell C.

3. Tideway

Com­ple­tion date: first half of 2025

Orig­i­nal bud­get: £3.8bn

Cur­rent esti­mat­ed cost: £4.2bn

Due to be com­plet­ed in 2025, London’s new super sew­er is designed to cap­ture more than 95% of the sewage spills that enter the riv­er Thames. The city’s cur­rent sewage sys­tem most­ly relies on Vic­to­ri­an sew­ers, which were first built in the late 19th cen­tu­ry. 

Although the cur­rent sys­tem has expand­ed along­side London’s pop­u­la­tion, the infra­struc­ture is over­loaded, mean­ing that in a typ­i­cal year 40 mil­lion square metres of untreat­ed sewage are dumped into the Thames. The infra­struc­ture project will cre­ate an addi­tion­al 1.6 mil­lion cubic metres of addi­tion­al stor­age, which it is hoped will dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve the water qual­i­ty in the capital’s riv­er and make it a health­i­er envi­ron­ment for wildlife.

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic caused works to be delayed by nine months, incur­ring addi­tion­al costs of £233m. The most recent review of the Tide­way project, from Sep­tem­ber 2021, esti­mat­ed a cost of £4.2bn, with an esti­mat­ed annu­al cost of £20 to £25m, which will be cov­ered by Thames Water bill­pay­ers. 

Con­struc­tion began in 2016 and is tak­ing place at 24 sites across Lon­don. These will even­tu­al­ly be con­nect­ed by a 25km tun­nel below the riv­er that stretch­es from Acton in west Lon­don to Strat­ford in the east. These under­ground works are expect­ed to be com­plet­ed this year and the exca­vat­ed tun­nels will be large enough to fit three dou­ble-deck­er bus­es side by side.

As part of the infra­struc­ture project, sev­en new embank­ment areas are being con­struct­ed, includ­ing at Chelsea, Black­fri­ars and Vic­to­ria Embank­ment. The fore­shore struc­ture at Chelsea, for exam­ple, will include an area for the pub­lic to walk on and dis­play art­work.

“It is huge­ly excit­ing to see these pieces of embank­ment tak­ing shape and we look for­ward to when Lon­don­ers and vis­i­tors can enjoy these new spaces and get clos­er to the Riv­er Thames,” said Andy Mitchell, Tide­way CEO. “With the project due for com­ple­tion in 2025, we all look for­ward to the ben­e­fits of a clean­er, health­i­er riv­er Thames.”

4. Heathrow Airport expansion

Com­ple­tion date: cur­rent­ly seek­ing approval

Orig­i­nal bud­get: £14bn

The con­struc­tion of a third run­way at London’s Heathrow air­port has been in lim­bo since plans were first approved by Gor­don Brown’s Labour gov­ern­ment in 2009. As Europe’s busiest air­port before the pan­dem­ic and the only hub air­port in the UK, the eco­nom­ic case for the expan­sion is that the addi­tion of a third run­way will gen­er­ate an esti­mat­ed £61bn in eco­nom­ic growth and cre­ate up to 77,000 local jobs by 2030.

The pro­posed expan­sion includes the con­struc­tion of a new ter­mi­nal build­ing and new pub­lic trans­port inter­changes. It will increase capac­i­ty for an addi­tion­al 260,000 flights per year.

How­ev­er, Heathrow’s plans have con­sis­tent­ly been opposed by envi­ron­men­tal groups. After being can­celled by the coali­tion gov­ern­ment in 2010, it was adopt­ed as cen­tral gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy once more in 2016. The pro­posed third run­way was suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged in the court of appeal in Feb­ru­ary 2020 by envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign groups, who attest­ed that the expan­sion failed to take ade­quate account of Britain’s legal­ly bind­ing cli­mate com­mit­ments to reach net zero by 2050, made as part of the 2015 Paris Agree­ment.

This rul­ing was even­tu­al­ly over­turned by the Supreme Court in Decem­ber 2020, after Heathrow argued that the expan­sion would be built in accor­dance with the government’s cli­mate change pol­i­cy. The rever­sal of the deci­sion means Heathrow can now apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion for the project.

Amid the legal chal­lenges and ques­tions over its envi­ron­men­tal impact, the pan­dem­ic pre­sent­ed fur­ther issues for the project. Trav­el restric­tions caused pas­sen­ger num­bers to plum­met to 19.4 mil­lion in 2021 and the air­port has incurred loss­es of £3.8bn over the course of the Covid-19 cri­sis.

The air­line indus­try is expect­ed to see a sig­nif­i­cant recov­ery this year as the num­ber of hol­i­day­mak­ers con­tin­ues its return to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. Heathrow chief exec­u­tive John Hol­land-Kaye recent­ly con­firmed to the Finan­cial Times that the increase in pas­sen­ger num­bers means the airport’s expan­sion is now “back on the table”.

Under the 2015 plan sub­mit­ted to the Air­ports Com­mis­sion, the total cost of the project was esti­mat­ed to be £14bn. If the plan goes ahead now, it’s like­ly to cost even more.

5. Battersea power station redevelopment

Com­ple­tion date: Sum­mer 2022

Orig­i­nal bud­get: £9bn

The rede­vel­op­ment of Battersea’s Grade II-list­ed pow­er sta­tion is near­ing com­ple­tion. Led by a con­sor­tium of Malaysian investors, the £9bn con­struc­tion project began in 2013. Once fin­ished, the 42-acre brown­field site on the bank of the riv­er Thames will have been trans­formed into res­i­den­tial units, office space, shops, bars and restau­rants.

A num­ber of rede­vel­op­ment plans were sug­gest­ed for the pow­er plant’s rede­vel­op­ment fol­low­ing its clo­sure in 1975. At one point an indoor theme park was pro­posed for the space, while Chelsea foot­ball club also con­tem­plat­ed con­struct­ing a new, pur­pose-built sta­di­um on the site.

The first phase of the rede­vel­op­ment, the Cir­cus West Vil­lage, was com­plet­ed in 2017. This includ­ed the con­struc­tion of a num­ber of flats, while it also fea­tures bars, restau­rants and leisure facil­i­ties, includ­ing a small cin­e­ma and the­atre. An exten­sion of the North­ern line con­nect­ed Bat­tersea pow­er sta­tion to London’s under­ground net­work after open­ing last year.

The next phase of the regen­er­a­tion will see the icon­ic pow­er sta­tion build­ing open to the pub­lic. Once fin­ished, it will house Apple’s Lon­don cam­pus. The US tech giant will occu­py six floors of the brick pow­er sta­tion, pro­vid­ing space for 1,400 employ­ees. 

Beneath the office space, there will be a num­ber of shops and a food­hall, while the old tur­bine halls will become a 2000-capac­i­ty event venue. The mixed-use devel­op­ment will fea­ture 20,000 new homes, 250 shops, cafes and restau­rants, 19 acres of pub­lic space and a panoram­ic view­ing plat­form at the top of one of the pow­er station’s four chim­neys.

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