High speed rail: investing in Britain's future
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
‘High speed rail: investing in Britain’s future’ - decisions and next steps presents the decisions reached by the government in the light of this consultation and an outline of the immediate next stages of the project.
Feedback received
Detail of feedback received
Consultation summary report
This report provides a summary of the responses to the government’s consultation on ‘High speed rail: Investing in Britain’s future’.
Erratum
Please note: ‘Table A2.2: responding organisations by sector’ in ‘Appendix 2: list of participating organisations’ of the above named report should include references to the following organisations and elected representatives:
- Christopher Pincher - Member of Parliament for Tamworth
- Kirklees Council
- Town and Country Planning Association
- Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council
In the same table, ‘Iain Steward - Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes South’ should be listed as ‘Iain Stewart’.
The first paragraph under the heading ‘Question 6’ on page 15 of the above report should read as follows:
A total of 36,918 consultation responses comment on the Appraisal of Sustainability (AoS), including 614 which express satisfaction or endorsement and 158 which express concerns that the AoS is insufficient.
Addendum reports
2 addendum reports to the ‘High speed rail: investing in Britain’s future consultation summary report’ have since been published and separate written statements have been issued to Parliament about them on 17 July and 18 September 2012.
Addendum
After the consultation responses were published online, we then discovered that a small number of responses (407 out of 55,322 responses) had unintentionally not been forwarded to Dialogue by Design (DbyD) for inclusion in their response assessment process. In addition, a further 6 responses had been incorrectly marked as duplicates by DbyD.
This addendum report is a supplementary analysis of all the affected consultation responses which was commissioned from DbyD. The report concludes that these 413 responses do not provide any information that was not already included in the previous ‘Consultation summary report’ or would have made a difference to the substantive content or balance of that report. Therefore, their inclusion in DbyD’s original review of responses would not have substantially changed its findings nor affected the considerations which informed the decisions following consultation.
The Secretary of State for Transport issued a statement to Parliament about this on 17 July 2012 and we have contacted all those who submitted a response affected by the processing error. The consultation summary report and the addendum report each include a list of participating organisations at appendix 2 and appendix 1 respectively. Individual respondents are not listed.
Addendum 2
After the consultation responses were published online, we then discovered that a small number of responses submitted online (722 of around 55,000 submitted in total) were not analysed fully by DbyD due to technical errors. For these responses, the answers to one or more of the 7 consultation questions were omitted from DbyD’s analysis. In total, approximately 0.4% of answers provided to individual consultation questions were affected.
Addendum 2 is a supplementary analysis by DbyD of the 722 affected consultation responses submitted online. The report concludes that the affected responses ‘do not provide any information that was not already included in the previous consultation summary report or would have made a difference to the substantive content or balance of that report’.
The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport issued a statement about this to Parliament on 18 September 2012 explaining that the cause has been identified as technical errors in transferring data captured from online consultation responses to the consultation analysis database held by DbyD.
All those who submitted the responses affected have been contacted with details of their particular cases to notify them and apologise.
Original consultation
Consultation description
The government believes that a national high speed rail network offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way we travel in Britain.
On 28 February 2011 the government launched a national consultation, ‘High speed rail: investing in Britain’s future’. The consultation set out the government’s proposed strategy for a national high speed rail network for Britain and the route for an initial line between London and the West Midlands.
The consultation asked 7 questions, covering the government’s overall strategy, the proposed route for the London to West Midlands line, the environmental appraisal of this line, and options for supporting property owners affected by the proposals. The consultation closed on 29 July 2011.
Consultation document
Consultation background documents
- London to West Midlands rail alternatives - update of economic appraisal, 10 March 2011
- Economic case for HS2: The Y network and London West Midlands, 28 February 2011
- HS2 London to the West Midlands appraisal of sustainability, 28 February 2011
- HS2 route engineering report, 28 February 2011
- Strategic alternatives to the proposed Y network, 28 February 2011
- Maps of the proposed route for consultation, 28 February 2011
- HS2 high speed rail background reports, 20 December 2010