We have produced this memorandum on the Crossrail programme to support Parliamentary scrutiny of Crossrail in light of events that transpired during the second half of 2018. From July 2018, it became clear that programme costs were increasing significantly. In August 2018 Crossrail Ltd announced that it would not meet planned opening dates for the railway. In November 2018, the Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts wrote to the Comptroller and Auditor General and asked him to examine the reasons for cost and schedule increases.
The final cost remains uncertain. There is currently no date for when the railway will be fully operational.
This Memorandum sets out the background to the Crossrail programme, including why and how it is being built, and who is building and paying for it. It also includes public statements about when the Department for Transport (the Department), Transport for London (TfL) and Crossrail Ltd expect services to operate, how much they currently estimate the programme will cost, and what funding has been committed to the programme. It is based mainly on publicly available information.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will be publishing a value-for-money study on the programme in Spring 2019. The NAO's report will examine:
• the underlying causes of the delays and cost increases;
• the reasons why the programme unravelled in 2018, and why issues emerged so quickly and with such a significant cost increase; and
• the actions sponsors and Crossrail Ltd have taken to get the programme on track, and our assessment of whether these actions are likely to be sufficient.
Depending on the progress of the programme by the time we report, it will also set out the expected forecast cost and delivery schedule, and assess the programme's remaining future risks.