Insufficient rigour went into estimating the costs of the Sheffield to Rotherham tram train scheme, representatives of Network Rail and the Department for Transport admitted this week in front of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

 

The project – a pilot to test public transport that uses both street tramways and the national rail network – is now expected to cost more than four times its original £15M budget, and is still yet to complete.

 

This week’s PAC evidence session came following a report from the National Audit Office this summer. The report documented how the project became more complex than had been expected at the design stage, which led to overruns and escalating costs.

 

“At the point in 2012 when Ministers decided to go ahead with this project I don’t think we had the level of understanding of costs or assurance of costs that we should have had,” the DfT’s permanent secretary Bernadette Kelly told the PAC.

 

But, she added: “It was a pilot and an inherently risky project in that respect, so it is not surprising that some of the costs did not become apparent until later in the project’s progress.”

 

Network Rail route managing director Rob McIntosh commented that it was not until 2014 that some of the costs associated with the new technology being used for the project started to be realised.

 

Its chief executive Mark Carne also told the committee that early cost estimates for the project were of an inadequate standard and admitted that there was at the time a culture of agreeing to costs “before the proper design work had been done”.

 

He said: “We have since put in place a number of measures around our governance of these projects that will prevent these sorts of early promises being made at too immature a stage in a project’s lifecycle.” These changes have come in since the publication of the Hendy Review in 2015.

 

The Sheffield to Rotherham tram train scheme is still under way, having been due for completion in 2016.

 

Mark Carne added: “We have been through a tremendously painful learning curve here but we have developed new technology and are in the process of getting that type approved so that we should be able to deliver future tram train projects with greater confidence.”