Andy Burnham is expected to pledge a revival of the Birmingham to Manchester HS2 line, with an estimated cost of £102.7 billion, funded by capturing the increase in land values around station areas. The announcement comes as part of a broader push to improve rail infrastructure in the North of England.
Cost and Funding Mechanism
Phase 2 of the HS2 programme, connecting Birmingham to Manchester, has an estimated cost of £102.7 billion. As of March 2026, £44.2 billion has already been spent on the overall HS2 programme. The total projected cost for the scaled-back scheme, running from London Euston to Birmingham Curzon Street, is estimated to be between £87.7 billion and £102.7 billion in 2025 prices.
Burnham plans to use a funding system similar to that deployed for Crossrail, capturing the windfall from increased land values created by the infrastructure. Speaking to the i Paper, he said: “The lack of high-quality rail infrastructure in the North of England holds back its growth potential. If you put that infrastructure in, it lays the foundations for higher growth.”
Land Value Uplift Analysis
Ranking Atlas has measured land values across 15.4 million transactions over 17 years of HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. The analysis found that five of seven cancelled station areas grew faster than England between their HS2 route announcement and Q3 2023 (pre-cancellation). The remaining two underperformed by 4% to 7%.
Toton, the planned East Midlands hub, recorded a +40.5 percentage point anticipation premium, with its median price doubling between Q1 2013 and Q3 2023, compared to 59.7% growth for England over the same period. Manchester Piccadilly-area prices grew 90.9%, outpacing England by 31.2 percentage points. Sheffield Midland outpaced by 20.2 points, and Manchester Airport by 10.4 points.
Old Oak Common, the active London super-hub, underperformed England by 4.8 percentage points over the same announcement-to-cancellation window and has since fallen a further 18.8%.
First-of-Its-Kind Study
The value of station-area uplift has not previously been quantified at postcode-district level. This study is the first to index every planned HS2 station area against England from route announcement to cancellation using Land Registry transaction data.
Burnham added: “If you go back, I put the funding package together for Crossrail and it was actually a package that did have contributions from business and residents. You don’t take all the windfall off the landholder, but you share the proceeds of that windfall, and the increase in land values created by the infrastructure is captured to pay back the cost of the infrastructure.”
Support from High Speed Rail Group
Huw Merriman, chair of the High Speed Rail Group, said: “A new connection between Birmingham and Manchester will add transport capacity to and from the North, while also helping to deliver the government’s ambition of a more balanced UK economy.”
