Britain still isn't moving fast enough

Britain's sluggish timelines for building are a democratic disconnect

Looking forward to taking a ride and getting an OAP discount.

POD! Don’t forget to check out this week’s episode of The Abundance Agenda, where Martin and I talk about the NIMBY assault on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and the trade-off between day-to-day and capital spending. Plus we speak to former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke about the launch of the Tory YIMBY campaign. Listen on Spotify, Apple or Substack.

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I recently turned 38 and to be honest, I’m not taking it massively well.

I can no longer deny that I’m in my late 30s, and that middle age is not so much on the horizon, but at the next junction. And I’m not quite ready for it.

Part of that is anxiety about my own position in life. Have I achieved enough? Have I made the most of my life so far? But what makes it feel so much worse is working out how old I’ll be when all of the infrastructure projects that we need to pull Britain out of its malaise will actually be completed.

Take HS2, as the obvious example. Until recently, the timeline was that services would start running in 2033 – eight years from now. But the programme has got into such a mess that it is currently undergoing a “reset” – and no one will really know what the schedule looks like until that process has been completed. Reportedly, though, it is looking like it will be 2036 – or even 2039. Another 14 years away, when I’ll be 52 years old.

And to be clear, this is just the bare-bones initial HS2 service, linking Birmingham Curzon Street with Old Oak Common in West London. Getting the line to Euston could take even longer.¹

Then there’s the Bakerloo Line extension in London. Plans have been in the works for literally decades, and the route has been figured out in detail. One day, the extension will extend south from Elephant & Castle to Old Kent Road and on to Lewisham. But there was no funding for it in the Spending Review, and even if the government does somehow pony up the cash, projections put the opening in 2040, when I’ll be 53.²

And even smaller projects are going to take ages too. The government recently announced it had put up £2.1bn for West Yorkshire to finally build the tram system that Leeds has needed for decades. Great. But the press release goes on to reveal that there will be “full public consultation” during 2026, and the hope is there will be “shovels in the ground” by 2028. The first trams are expected to launch services “before the mid-2030s”. Can it really take a decade to embed some rails into the ground?

The example that drove me insane most recently though – and what motivated me to write this piece – was seeing this short video about some fairly modest plans for North Wales. There is no massive new railway line being constructed. Instead, it’s mostly piecemeal upgrades that will improve services. And the timelines are, frankly, depressing.

For example, the hope is that by 2035 (when I’ll be 48), that it will be possible to run up to four trains per hour between Wrexham and Liverpool. And then by 2050 – a quarter of a century from now, when I’ll be 63, the hope is that Transport for Wales will be able to open some new train stations, and electrify the Marches line, which links Shrewsbury to Cardiff.

However, it is not just rail projects that are the problem. These incredibly long timelines are also evident, well, everywhere.

Take the two new reservoirs that the government recently approved. The proposed Fens Reservoir in Cambridgeshire will be finished in 2036. The one in Lincolnshire will be finished in 2039 or 2040 too. And similarly, Sizewell C, the new nuclear plant that was officially approved earlier this week is expected to come online in the mid-2030s.

And what about the Small Modular Reactor (SMR), which Rachel Reeves announced in the Spending Review? Even though the selling point of SMRs is that they aren’t as complicated as full-sized nuclear power plants, and can theoretically be deployed more quickly, apparently the government won’t be making a final funding decision until 2029. Four years away.³

Hopefully by now you have a sense of my frustration.

Though taken individually, it’s pretty easy to rationalise why it takes so long to build stuff. But collectively, this just adds up to a massive problem.

I mean, just think about how much of your life will fly by before you can ever hope to set foot on a High Speed 2 train. If like me, you dreamt as a child of going to Mars you can probably forget it. By the time I retire, I’ll be lucky if I can go to Birmingham Curzon Street.

The democratic disconnect

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully supportive of all of the above infrastructure improvements. They are all absolutely vital projects that we need if Britain is to get out of its slump.

And that’s why my reaction to totting up the above is: Jesus fucking Christ, can’t we make any of these projects happen any faster?

I realise that this isn’t an original observation. Complaining about the sluggish pace of building is not exactly an original thing to do at this point.

In fact, building more and speeding up construction is pretty much the government’s entire schtick. In the Spending Review, Rachel Reeves threw billions of pounds at new infrastructure and housing projects, which is brilliant. Similarly, earlier this week, the landmark Planning and Infrastructure Bill sailed through the House of Commons, and is on its way to becoming law.

These are very good things. As is the steady stream of press releases announcing incremental regulatory changes to speed things up. For example, in just the last couple of weeks, the government has announced that it is bringing forward autonomous vehicle trials by a year, and is easing planning rules on heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers. All big thumbs up from me.

But when I look at the timelines, I still want to howl with despair. Even with the Planning Bill, and even with a government that seems to be committed to speed, it still feels like progress is moving too slowly.

It’s a cliché to point to it, but it is genuinely insane that China was able to build the 820-mile⁴ Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway line in just 39 months, and yet 14 years later, the idea of something like that happening in Britain is inconceivable.

But in a world where that pace of building is possible, it simply shouldn’t take us until 2050 to… electrify a railway line in Wales that already exists.⁵

And sure, the obvious riposte is that China isn’t a democratic system. The government there doesn’t need to negotiate with stakeholders or compensate landowners. There are no local councillors able to frustrate construction and add millions to the bill. So the friction in our system is arguably democracy at work.

But it is definitely not democracy at its finest.

I think we need to turn the China argument on its head. I mean, how can we claim to be a democracy when there is no tangible connection between politicians making decisions and anything actually happening?

Sure, not everything can be built in the period between elections, but it’s depressing that there will likely be precious few shovels in the ground, let alone functioning metro systems, operating by 2029, when the current government will have to face the electorate again.

My worry is that people will still be pissed off, as they will still not see any, or enough, tangible changes in their lives. And to an extent, they will be right. The annoying thing is the government is doing most of the right things – but the timeline on delivery and the next election doesn’t really match up.

By the mid-2030s, when HS2 is hopefully up and running, when the reservoirs are pumping water and when Sizewell C is generating abundant, clean electricity, Keir Starmer will no longer be Prime Minister. Many of the older politicians who approved or worked on these various projects may no longer even be with us.

That seems to me like something we should worry about even more. We need to double down and build a system where when a politician decides something, voters can actually see it happening.

As I approach my fourth decade, I know I’m going to have to make peace with middle age eventually. I’ll have to reconcile myself to seeing a bald head when I look in the mirror. But what I can’t make peace with is the idea that building infrastructure – even complicated, nationally significant infrastructure – should, despite everything, still take so damn long.

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1. And just try not to think about the legs to Manchester and Leeds, as it is just too depressing.

2. Even starting a bus route that mirrors this extension is going to take ages. The “Bakerloop” express bus, which Sadiq Khan has been promoting recently, was first proposed in April last year, when I was 36 – and operations look set to finally begin this Autumn. 18 months later and now that I’m 38. C’mon! How hard can running a bus be?!

3. We should also be building ten of them, but that’s a whole other thing.

4. Equivalent in distance to London to Marseille.

5. Another reference point. By 2050, the European Space Agency will have designed built, launched and landed a probe on Saturn. In the time it takes to electrify one railway line.