What the ‘sugar cube’ is meant to look like when it is finished

HS2 held a topping out ceremony for a building which will no longer be needed – just weeks before the Prime Minister scaled back the controversial rail scheme.

The “sugar cube” building – made with eye-catching perforated white porcelain panels – was billed a “vital piece of urban infrastructure” when it coasted through the planning permission process in 2019.

But Rishi Sunak’s announcement earlier this month that he is hacking back the scale of the HS2 station at

Euston means the cube will almost certainly not be needed. The huge square box was built on land once used by UCL’s science department to house an electrical substation and ventilation fans needed for the construction of the new platforms of the HS2 Euston terminus.

Bulldozers were set to flatten the disused 1914 Euston station in Melton Street, but this may not be required under the new plans gor the Euston station to only have six new platforms.

Jeff Travers, a railway engineer who lives in Primrose Hill said “Thanks to Rishi Sunak there is now no need to demolish the old station. So the Sugar Cube will be redundant.”

In September, at the grand topping out ceremony, contractor Mace Dragos’s delivery director Paul Leighton described the topping out ceremony as “a critical milestone”, adding that the “traction substation project represents everything that’s exciting about complex infrastructure delivery”.

But a report from the Department for Transport, published after Mr Sunak’s bombshell announcement, said the footprint of the station was going to be reduced and the number of platforms cut from 10 to 6.

A gathering for the ‘topping out’ of the cube – just weeks before Rishi Sunak’s announcement

There will also be no links between the new HS2 Euston terminus and Euston Square tube station.

Mr Travers suggested the Cube building could be used as a temporary home for a pub to replace the Bree Louise, which was seized and demolished to make way for platforms that the government now does not want to build.

This latest HS2 fiasco came in the same week that a whistleblower taking the HS2 Limited to an employment tribunal told the Sunday Times that the real costs of HS2 were held back and that repeated warnings were made to the National Audit Office and cabinet ministers as the price raced out of control.

The government is still linking Euston with Birmingham but has given up on taking it all the way to Manchester.

Stephen Cresswell, who used to work for HS2 as a senior cost analyst, told the Sunday newspaper: “There were problems with the way the figures had been calculated and it was likely to cost an awful lot more — around 50 per cent. I did the calculations pointing this out but I was told to concentrate my efforts on something else.”

The emergence of clearer estimates of the total cost of HS2 has led to the cost-cutting review that has led to the drastic reduction of the scope of plans around Euston Station.

Tonight (Thursday), Camden’s planning committee will be asked to consider temporary “meanwhile uses” for the Maria Fidelis Secondary School that had to be “decanted” due to its proximity to the demolition zone.

The HS2 Ltd application suggests that a combination of demolition, landscaping and retrofitting on the North Gower Street site could be used to create a two-floor Construction Skills Centre, office space, open space, and a “multi-use community facility”.

These would be “meanwhile uses for a period of 10 years” – after which it would be sold off to the highest bidder as part of plans for a massive privately funded overhaul of the area.

The station building in Melton Street 

The planning documents warn the land could be contaminated after discovery of “rare asbestosis-containing materials” (ACM) in the north of the site.

A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said: “In line with direction from the Government, HS2 Ltd is continuing to deliver critical preparatory work, that had already commenced prior to the phased funding decision in March, required for a future HS2 station at Euston.”