Panorama Hs2

Thousands of home and businesses are affected and land is already being cleared to make way for the new High Speed 2 train line - the biggest infrastructure project in Europe. HS2 has a price tag of £56 billion, but does anyone know how much it will really cost? As land gets bought up, Panorama investigates the impact the controversial rail scheme is having and what the final cost could be. The programme hears claims that even as the first part of the project was being signed off by Parliament, there were already concerns within the company that the final bill for land and property would end up higher. Could mounting costs derail the budget and bring the future of the scheme itself into question?

HS2 was meant to be the railway of the future, an epic piece of engineering which would get Britain moving and help level up. But more than a decade on, the costs have rocketed, key sections of the line have been scrapped, and the project is mired in uncertainty. Richard Bilton investigates what went wrong, talking to politicians, whistle-blowers and people living along the route, to discover how billions of pounds of taxpayers' money was blown.