A BUNGLING mandarin will leave her job this summer after the costs for HS2 spiralled out of control.
Dame Bernadette Kelly, the top civil servant at the Department for Transport, will exit the role after failing to give a precise total for the beleaguered rail project.
PATop civil servant Dame Bernadette Kelly to leave job in the coming weeks[/caption]
She told MPs back in December that the official estimate of between £54 billion and £66 billion for the London to Birmingham leg weren’t reliable.
The move comes after her department said her department didn’t “regard it as a reliable and agreed cost estimate”.
She told the Public Accounts Committee: “I say with great regret… that is the situation.”
The upper estimate of £66 billion was based on 2019 figures that is now understood to be around £83 billion.
Mark Wild, the new boss of Hs2, said the firm had failed to keep costs under control mainly due to “systemic and “enduring problems”.
Bernadette Kelly became the Permanent Secretary at the Transport Department in 2017.
A source confirmed she was leaving for the job expected in early summer which they said was long planned.
The HS2 project was set to cost £37.5 billion in 2013, based on 2009 prices, for the whole network.
This included the now abandoned extensions from Birmingham to both Manchester and Leeds.
Ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak scrapped the Birmingham to Manchester leg with money going on road schemes.
A DfT spokesperson said: “Bernadette Kelly has ably led the Department for Transport’s civil servants for 8 years, helping numerous Transport Secretaries during this time, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She is proud of the work that she has done to help support a modern transport network delivering for the people of the UK.”
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