Episode Twelve: Leaving a legacy (transcript)

This is a transcript of episode twelve of HS2’s How to build a railway podcast, first published on 13 June 2023.       

Fran Scott

I’m Fran Scott and this is How to Build a Railway.

We heard all the way back in episode 1 the case for HS2: Expanding capacity, improving travel times, and providing zero carbon transport on the UK’s busiest routes. But megaprojects like HS2 aren’t just about building a new piece of infrastructure, they are an opportunity to reshape and regenerate communities, the economy, and the entire country.

Projects on this scale have the time, money and size to influence and improve entire industries, by trialling new methods, investing in new technologies, and by giving opportunities to new areas of a workforce,

Ever since HS2 was announced, the company has been planning not just how they would build a railway but what kind of legacy HS2 wanted and how they would deliver it.

Very early on in the project’s development, the legacy team decided on one of their major focuses. Jobs and skills.

1.28

Natalie Penrose

So both in terms of the infrastructure industry and the rail industry, it’s an ageing workforce. So it’s a workforce that’s predominantly over 45. It’s also a workforce that’s very white and

male and has struggled to attract females, but also ethnic minority candidates as well.

It is a problem, an industry with a lack of diversity, and we’re trying to change that. And then the scale and size of HS2—you know, we’re looking to get up to a workforce of 34,000 at peak—means that we can really make an industry step change and we can be a game changer for the industry in general.

Fran Scott

Natalie Penrose is the head of legacy at HS2.

2.09

Natalie Penrose

And that means I cover all aspects of legacy that’s related to people. So my team deal with equality, diversity and inclusion HS2, but also skills education and employment. And what we’re trying to do is build a workforce now for HS2, but also a workforce that’s fit for the future, a diverse, skilled and talented workforce that will benefit the UK infrastructure industry for years to come.

Fran Scott

Dyan Crowther is the CEO of HS1 and has worked in the rail industry for over 35 years. She has seen first-hand the issues with the emerging skills gap in the rail and infrastructure industries.

2.47

Dyan Crowther

Outside of my day job, I chair an organisation called NSAR, which is a National Skills Academy for Rail. We do a lot of data analysis on skills. We provide that information to the sector. We support a lot of SMEs in terms of their apprenticeships and accreditation and training. It’s a big issue, a huge issue. We’ve put out a challenge to the industry to sort of say, you know, on all your apprenticeship programmes, you need to double the number of apprentices that you’re recruiting, because if you don’t, there’s going to be a skills gap.

Fran Scott

Changing the look of an industry’s workforce doesn’t take place overnight, but with a project like HS2 that will take place over decades, Natalie and her legacy team knew they had a long time to inspire the next generation.

3.36

Natalie Penrose

So in terms of trying to build a workforce sort of fit for the future, we start young. So we have a programme of STEM workshops across the line of route where we go out to schools and talk to them about STEM subjects. They are interactive workshops, where we have people go in and bring to life what working in this sort of industry can mean and really try to inspire that workforce of the future.

Fran Scott

But it’s not just about inspiring the next generation, it’s also about hiring them.

HS2 limited employs around 2,000 people. They have committed to creating an internal workforce that is diverse and inclusive, and they have been active in ensuring they hire people from underrepresented backgrounds.

But it’s not just the 2,000 internal staff. Across the whole supply chain, tens of thousands of people will work on HS2 across the project’s lifetime.

4.36

Natalie Penrose

And we have requirements for all our contractors in terms of EDI, but also for skills, education and employment. For example, we ask our contractors to have 4% of their workforce formed of apprentices.

we’re aiming to have 2000 apprentices over the life of the project. And I think it’s fair to say we’re smashing that target, we’ve just gone past that 1000 apprentice milestone, we currently have almost 1200 apprentices working on the project. And that’s up and down the line of route across all of our supply chain.

5.06

Dyan Crowther

And that’s one of the great things about HS2 is, in the work you have done on you know, developing your apprentices, developing the schemes and really being quite intelligent about looking down the line and going, Okay, when it’s built, we’re going to need all of these resources. So actually, we need to grow our own. And also been quite innovative in terms of how you grow your own and how you get people in.

Fran Scott

The HS2 apprenticeship scheme has given thousands of young people an opportunity in an industry that many of them hadn’t previously thought about joining.

5.46

Sam Harris

I went in to the HS2 website where I found all the apprenticeships. And project management just really stood out to me, to be honest I didn’t really know too much about the industry. I’ve never known a project manager before. But like I said the role sounded quite good. And when I got through the first stage, I started to look into it quite a bit more and realised that it was, you know, it’s a job that would suit me and my personality.

6.08

Alex Couchman

I didn’t know what a project manager was. I’d never heard of it until I applied for the position because I read the criteria of what they wanted. I felt like I could do that, I could do it effectively with my skills and I could grow a career in it.

Fran Scott

Sam and Alex are two of HS2 apprentices. And they both highlighted the freedom they have on the apprenticeship scheme to move around to different parts of the project and find what they are passionate about.

6.41

Sam Harris

Every apprentice has a different experience and has their own unique experience.

They invest a lot of money and time into you as an apprentice here and I think that’s really good, because you hear a lot of horror stories about apprenticeships, sometimes I mean, people who’ve had apprenticeships and not really gone anywhere with them and you know have been quite bored in them. I think that’s what makes HS2 apprenticeships what they are. I think having that independence and having that freedom to move around and decide what you like.

For example, I was working on a construction site eight months ago, and now I’m working in an office in digital engineering, which is coding and programming. Two very polar opposite things, but they actually link into each other quite, quite cleverly, and quite, quite uniquely as well.

7.30

Alex Couchman

We are given a lot of influence over what we do, it’s our decision or how long we spend in the placement, what placement we want to go to. So the way it works is you can talk to your line manager, you can talk to the Talent Team. So there’s a team of three individuals that look after the apprentices and graduates at HS2, or you can contact a different team yourself. So on my previous rotation, I contacted someone and I said, Right, let’s put a start date down on the 23rd of January, and then I moved. So it’s really flexible. It’s really easy and it’s really fun.

Fran Scott

The scheme allows apprentices to get real experience working all over the project.

8.16

Alex Couchman

So at the moment, I’m working in civils delivery. So what we do is we put the bridges up, build the tunnels and set everything ready to put the rails and the stone down to get the trains on.

So in my current rotation, I’ve done a week with a construction Assurance Manager and I had a look at their role. I’ve done a week with a commercial manager and had a look at his role. I did a week shadowing a senior project manager to know what he did. And then I spent a lot of my time with one of the project managers to see what they do to give me a more broad experience and understand how each function feeds into our team which has been quite interesting and exciting. It’s good for development on a personal level because I’ve learned a range of skills. I now know how to build a bridge which I didn’t know before.

Fran Scott

And it’s not just skills and experience Sam and Alex will take from their apprenticeship. The HS2 project manager apprentices also go to college to study for their PMQ, their project manager qualification.

And even after they have completed the scheme they get help from HS2 to figure out what they want to do next.

9.30

Sam Harris

There is an offboarding process where HS2 will help you, will sit down with you and help you decide a role that they think would suit you and what you think would suit yourself.

Fran Scott

Those who graduate from the HS2 apprenticeship scheme often stay working with HS2 in some form but also get opportunities from across the industry.

10.06

Sam Harris

When you off-board, it’s not solely for HS2 itself, you look at jobs in the supply chain. So you can still be working with HS2, but say for a different company. But that’s completely down to the individual and their personality, really. I think there’s people who like to stay in the same place and, you know, build their career in one place. And I think that’s great. But there’s also many individuals who like to explore different companies and different avenues and so I think that’s great as well.

Fran Scott

Alex says the HS2 apprenticeship has changed the trajectory of his life and he would definitely recommend others in his position take the risk and apply for the scheme.

10.47

Alex Couchman

I mean you look at me and Sam today before we came to HS2 we had very little options. We were a little bit lost and now you sit and look at us and go we’ve got in a sense too many options and that’s what HS2 does it just gives you too many options in your life. I never realised the world I was walking into when I applied and I’d say to anyone that wants to apply, do it. It is worth it because you’ll never get to do anything like this again. And there’s some fantastic people here with careers that they’ve had all over the world and you’ll get to learn a big range of knowledge. Go for it. It’s hard, but what HS2 to invest into you, it’s worth it .

Fran Scott

And it’s not just the apprentices working for HS2. Up and down the supply chain HS2 has required its contractors to help bring the next generation into the workforce.

11.43

Natalie Penrose

We’re clear about our commitment to bringing in people with new skills and different backgrounds. So those things are built into the tendering process. They’re assessed through procurement. And the requirements are built into the contract going forward.

So it’s a combination of sort of procurement and its contract combination of building into contract and then it’s monitoring it. So you know, one of the things that makes HS2 different is the quality of data that we’ve got. So we’re able to monitor workforce diversity across our supply chain. We know whether they’ve got external accreditation, we also monitor the number of apprentices they have, and the number of people they’re bringing into the project from a situation of worklessness. So that really rich data that we’ve got over 10s of 1000s of people now working on this project enables us to understand whether we are really making that step change that we’ve aspired to achieve.

Fran Scott

Already Natalie is seeing how contractors across the supply chain have embraced their apprenticeship goals.

12.38

Natalie Penrose

So whilst this is in contracts, and that’s a key way of achieving the outcomes we’re seeing, seeing the cultures develop is really rewarding. Seeing those cultures in our supply chain, when this is genuinely important to them. This is something they’re striving to be the best at is, you know, a great thing to see.

It’s fair to say that that sort of our supply chain is exceeding the expectations that we set through contract. So at the moment, the momentum is great. We’re seeing workforce diversity above industry averages, and in some cases significantly above industry averages.

Fran Scott

And it’s not just young apprentices, HS2 has been bringing thousands of people back into the workforce.

13.17

Natalie Penrose

We brought over 3000 people into employment who were previously not in work. And those are people who’ve got sustained employment for 26 weeks or more. These are people who are going to work for big joint venture contracts and who will potentially have a career with those businesses, or years to come. So it’s a win-win situation, really, we get all of the benefit of that on HS2 and our supply chain, get new skills, new talent, that they can hopefully nurture and employ for potentially decades to come.

Fran Scott

It’s not only about creating jobs and skills. Megaprojects like HS2 also need to consider their social legacy.

Communities up and down the route of HS2 are impacted by the years of construction, but HS2 has been seeking to minimise this impact wherever possible, while also providing eligible community groups with funding for a range of community-led projects that improve their local quality of life.

Cathy Elliot is the chair of HS2’s funding programme

14.26

Cathy Elliot

and that includes our community and environment fund, business and local economy fund. And also for phase 2a our biodiversity Investment Fund.

Fran Scott

The Business and Local Economy Fund is known as BLEF and The Community and Environment Fund is called CEF

14.43

Cathy Elliot

And it was about putting together a funding programme that gives back to communities disrupted by the construction of HS2. But way above compensation and mitigation and additional risk mitigation funds, you might want to see it like a corporate social responsibility programme.

Fran Scott

The funds are administered independently and consider application from any communities impacted by HS2’s construction, particularly those within 1 km of the route.

The community and environment fund has helped hundreds of community projects get off the ground. And they range from very small to very big ideas.

15.21

Cathy Elliot

We’ve funded a huge variety of projects over the years and we’re literally in hundreds now. Well over 230 projects were funded along the phase one line of route. So we’ve been awarding projects, small amounts of money 9-10,000 pounds, which might be getting community gardening projects, or Britain in bloom projects, up and running.

And then we do the large scale projects as well which are over 75,000 Or we’ve done some big scale stuff, including Warwickshire Art Centre. It’s our biggest arts project that we funded, we contributed to their capital development, again, a fantastic legacy. The plaque will be on the wall for the HS2 funding programme for many, many years to come. And also Wendover Woods is one of our big projects that we funded to support the facilities and improve them there, that benefit communities far and wide.

Fran Scott

There has been a huge variety in the projects funded by HS2, like playgrounds, libraries, sports facilities and art and community centres.

And it is important that the ideas and the applications come from the communities themselves.

16.47

Cathy Elliot

I’ve worked in community funding and community engagement for many years. And I think if something is happening in a community like HS2 or any other development, there’s a lot of road developments going on, for example, at the moment, then the community has the right to their fair share of funding. It’s then their decision on what they want to do if they want to come forward and what they want to come forward with. But by having the programme independently administered and with independent oversight and insight from myself as independent chair with our panel, it means that we’re not judging whatever relationship or opinion they have of HS2 we want to back great community ideas and quality projects. So I hope that enables community leaders and organisations to come forward with confidence.

Fran Scott

And Cathy says the key to getting good applications is by working closely with the local communities to not only make them aware of the funding that’s available but also helping to guide them through the application process.

17.43

Cathy Elliot

I’m very passionate and committed to making sure that every community gets their fair share of funding during construction and in the first year of operations. So, this is a long term project.

We’ll alert colleagues and community engagement and at Groundwork UK if there’s certain areas that we would really welcome more applications from. We also find that when we publicise certain projects being successful, particularly through regional local media, it starts sort of spreading ideas, people think, “Oh, this is possible, they might back my idea.”

And we’ve really worked hard to give positive feedback that some of those projects near to the line of route may have come back second or third time, and we want the quality application, but we will support them to put through good information to us, that gives us the assurance to back them and fund them.

Fran Scott

Alongside the community and environment fund, Cathy also oversees the business and local economy fund or BLEF for short.

18.34

Cathy Elliot

I think it’s incredibly helpful to support partnerships of businesses, clusters of businesses, a high street or a group of independent businesses. It’s small to large scale on gaining the support they need.

We’re working alongside councils, business improvement districts, growth hubs, for example, or getting out and about and talking to them to say, we can see because of the line of route on the map, you might have a cluster of businesses, that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed in any way that you’ll be given funding, we want to make sure you know about the opportunity and come forward.

Fran Scott

Work for Cathy and her team over the many years they have been running the funds is simply letting local communities know that the funds are available.

Kathy and her colleagues have been encouraging contractors from up and down the supply chain to engage with the communities they are working in and help spread the word about the funds.

19.59

Cathy Elliot

I think what we have found with the funding programme over six or more years now is that by talking to communities, about their needs and ambitions, it helps balance out the conversation. And that’s what the funding programme is. It’s above mitigation. It’s above compensation, it is about giving back to communities. There’s an online map available, you can go and click around and read and look at the line of route and find out more about those projects. But also might see or hear a gem or have an idea from a community. And please encourage them to apply. It really helps us work together because we’ve got to work together for many, many years on this project.

Fran Scott

The business fund is not the only way HS2 is working towards an economic legacy

We heard in episode 8, about the Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation, which aims to bring economic regeneration to the area around the Old Oak Common station. But that isn’t the only example of a development corporation set up on the HS2 route.

21.05

Jonathan Bretherton

I’m Jonathan Bretherton. I’m the managing director of Solihull urban growth company.

Fran Scott

The goal of the Urban Growth Company or UGC is similar to the work being done at Old Oak Common.

21.17

Jonathan Bretherton

The mission is to accelerate and improve the redevelopment of an area three square miles known as the UK central hub.

So we work in partnership with Birmingham Airport with the National Exhibition Centre or NEX as it’s known, and also Jaguar Land Rover and Birmingham business park.

Fran Scott

But the main focus of the UGC is the area surrounding the new interchange station, but unlike the area around the Old Oak Common station currently there is nothing there.

22.39

Jonathan Bretherton

It’s an area called Arden Cross, it’s a place that doesn’t exist yet, it’s going to be a new place.

And that’s the home of the new HS2 interchange station that’s being built at the moment. So there’s a triangle of land there about 350 acres of land surrounding the area where the station is being built. And there’s a whole lot of infrastructure going in there at the moment roads and other infrastructure that HS2 is building were co investing alongside HS two and the objective is to build a new district and a new place settlement within that triangle.

Fran Scott

The interchange station is unlike any other on the HS2 route, and provides the area with a unique opportunity for development.

22.41

Jonathan Bretherton

Birmingham, obviously, is the second city. We’re halfway between London and Manchester on the new High Speed Line. So the fact that we’ll be connected to both of those cities in less than 40 minutes, heading north or south, is really quite transformational. That’s the first point. Then secondly, there’s the scale of the site itself. It’s unusual on the HS2 line to have a new station in a rural area where there’s significant scope for expansion with a very supportive local authority that’s allocating land through its local plan for development. So you’ve got a very supportive local environment that wants to see growth and new homes and new jobs created there. And it’s not being shoehorned into an existing urban area as is the case with the other stations on the HS2 line so that set of circumstances is unique.

Fran Scott

The plans for the Arden Cross area include thousands of new homes, major commercial development and brand new transport links to connect with the centre of Birmingham and beyond.

Major infrastructure projects like HS2 give local councils and communities the opportunity to attract investment and to think long term about developments and regeneration.
While the UGC’s main focus is on Arden Cross, they are working with companies and communities across Birmingham, and Jonathan believes HS2 and the external investment coming with it will provide a huge boost to the whole of the West Midlands.

24.21

Jonathan Bretherton

If you fast forward 30 years there will be over 7 million square feet of commercial development that doesn’t currently exist or it’s just just in the early days of being developed. There’ll be over 8000 new homes. There’ll be on current value over 6 billion pounds per annum extra going into the West Midlands economy and there will be 10s of 1000s of new jobs  and that’s particularly important for East Birmingham and North Solihull which is area of huge deprivation so although Solihull as a borough is very affluent and very leafy and green if you go to the to the north of Solihull and into East Birmingham there is significant deprivation, so the fact that we’re creating all of these opportunities within minutes of travel time for people who already live there that’s going to be transformational to those communities.

Fran Scott

While 30 years may seem a long way away, it is exactly this sort of long-term thinking that is required when considering the benefits and legacy of major infrastructure projects like HS2.

25.33

Dyan Crowther

I mean, railways are expensive to build, period. So if you’re going to invest in a railway, you’ve got to go “Right, it’s going to cost a lot of money. But there are going to be long term benefits.”

So a bit like, you know, the Elizabeth line now, everyone moaned about it being over budget, everybody moved back to being late. Now, they love it, it’s bursting to the seams, it was needed. And I think HS2 will be the same as that as well.

Fran Scott

Dyan has seen first hand on HS1 how a major infrastructure project can regenerate local areas.

26.09

Dyan Crowther

In the early days, Eurostar went into Waterloo. In terms of where the terminal was going to be long term, Michael Heseltine, John Prescott—previous sort of Secretary of State’s for transport for Labour and the Tories—effectively wanted HS1 to also be regenerative. And the area around Kings Cross and sort of St. Pancras was awful. I know because I used to run Kings Cross station in the early 90s. And it was horrendous, nothing like what you sort of see today.

Fran Scott

Kings Cross went through a development plan, similar to those that have been set up around Birmingham Interchange and the Old Oak Common stations, that has resulted in 19,000 new jobs in the area, over 1,700 new homes and 10 new public parks and squares.

And like HS2, HS1 faced its own set of route selection headaches.

But now that HS1 has been operational for years the line’s users and the local communities have seen the benefits it brings, and attitudes have changed.

28.04

Dyan Crowther

If you go to Ashford now and sort of say to people, you know, what do you think of the high speed? “oh it’s brilliant, we love it,” you know, and it’s regenerated Ashford it’s regenerated parts of North Kent that really did need regenerating. And those are sort of some of the unintended consequences that yeah, the route was never planned for that. Now, and the ironic thing now is, you have sort of some towns that lobbied very hard for the high speed route not to go through them. So it didn’t, which is one of the reasons that ended up going up through North Kent. Absolutely. So the likes of Maidstone, everybody in Kent now wants a connection to the High Speed Rail Link. So lobbied against it and are lobbying to be part of the high speed network.

Fran Scott

And with HS1 many of the economic and environmental benefits have gone beyond what was expected in the original business case.

28.59

Dyan Crowther

We’ve calculated that we’ve brought, you know, a billion pounds worth of tourism revenue into the UK economy. That wasn’t in the original business case. 350 million in socio economic value to the Kent economy. Additional housing down at Ebbsfleet, giving people back productivity in terms of journey times. And then you look at the kind of the environmental benefits and certainly with the decarbonisation agenda, so prevalent now or at the top of everyone’s kind of list of things that are important. We take 750,000 tonnes of carbon out of the air every year because 66,000 flights are taken out of the air because of the Eurostar having an 80% market share of Paris and Brussels. And on top of all of that, I’ve got an asset that’s only 45% utilised. And part of our narrative is wow, you could double the benefits if you increase the utilisation of the asset, so if you have more trains, you’re going to get more socio economic benefits.

Fran Scott

Megaprojects on the scale of HS2 offer the chance to bring Britain closer together and boost long-term economic growth. But creating a legacy isn’t something that happens by accident, it is something that needs to be planned, considered and put into action from day one. Throughout this series we’ve heard how HS2 has helped reshape many industries that have now developed new working methods and technologies

Like in construction.

30.49

Emma Head

HS2 is a once in a lifetime investment by the UK Government.

And I think the legacy for HS2 will be that infrastructure for future generations.

We will have also learned some lessons for construction along the way, and will have developed new working practices and new materials to really help to clean up construction.

Fran Scott

In ecology…

31.12

Kat Stanhope

We’re really lucky at HS2, I think that it’s open to funding quite a lot of innovation projects.

We were trialling the use of drones and sensor technology to collect more data on how habitats are doing and monitoring data.

So just that the size of the project, I think allows those new ways of doing things sometimes out of necessity.

Fran Scott

And in many others like archaeology, ground investigations, health and safety and station design.

Building HS2 is largely about increasing rail capacity and speed of travel between the UK’s biggest cities.

But HS2’s legacy reaches beyond that. It’s helping the UK achieve net zero goals, it is inspiring the youngest generation’s interest in STEM, it’s employing the next generation of engineers, and it’s supporting  economic growth at both a local and national level, now and into the future.

We may have heard it best all the way back in episode 1 from Andrew McNaughton, the man who was in charge of drawing the HS2 line on a map, when he said…

32.54

Andrew McNaughton

This is about developing the future. This is about a future where the natural way of connecting cities is by this environmentally sensitive, very low carbon very efficient transport system.

CREDITS

Thank you for listening to How to Build a Railway.

Your host has been me Fran Scott.

Thanks to our guests, Natalie Penrose, Dyan Crowther, Cathy Elliott, Jonathan Bretherton, Alex Couchman and Sam Harris.

To learn more about HS2 go to www.hs2.org.uk or follow us on social media @hs2ltd.