Sheffield city council pay £190k on HS2 station relocation request

Sheffield city council has spent around £190k in an effort to relocate a proposed Meadowhall HS2 station to the city centre.

The council has claimed that a station in the city centre could create up to 6,500 more jobs and could potentially garner hundreds of millions of pound sin business rates, as reported by the BBC.

After BBC Look North put in a Freedom of Information request, the figures revealed that the council spent £78k for a full assessment of the case for a city centre station, a further £25.5k on “understanding the economic impact relocating the station and £6k on a business breakfast with HS2 representatives.”

In 2013, it was announced that the HS2 high-speed rail network would feature a station at Meadowhall that links Sheffield with London and Birmingham.

A spokeswoman for HS2 has since stated that the Meadowhall site had “significantly better connections to more people and places”.

However, the Sheffield City Council have said: “The differences in predicted economic impact between a city centre or an out-of-town parkway location are vast.

“A city centre station will help connect Sheffield to Leeds and Manchester to help create the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. An out-of-town parkway station will be a massive economic opportunity lost. “

Katherine Button, of HS2 Ltd, added: “The Sheffield Meadowhall station is the best location to serve the wider South Yorkshire region.

“We have scrutinised other options including a city centre site, but Meadowhall provides significantly better connections to more people and places across the region and at a lower cost, and provides the quickest onward journey times to Leeds, Newcastle and Scotland.

“That is why the majority of Sheffield City Region authorities, as well as Leeds City Region and East Midlands authorities support Meadowhall, and are keen to see faster progress in the coming months.

“The final decision will come from the Government and we anticipate an announcement will be made later this year.”