Crossrail delay to leave businesses with extra bill of up to £600 million

The completed Crossrail track in Whitechapel
PA

Businesses and developers will have to pay up to £600 million more to cover the costs of the Crossrail fiasco, the Evening Standard can reveal.

A levy on business rates will be extended for about four years and millions earmarked for Crossrail 2 will be redirected to help repay the additional £2 billion cost of the east-west line’s delayed opening.

Mayor Sadiq Khan agreed to find an extra £1.4 billion for Crossrail last December but the full details of how this will be repaid have only just emerged.

It means that the Crossrail business rates levy — paid by the capital’s 48,300 biggest firms and which has already helped generate £4.7 billion — will remain in force until 2037-38, 28 years after it was introduced in 2010. It was due to end in 2033-34.

Developers building near Crossrail stations will also have to pay a community infrastructure levy designed to raise £4.5 billion for Crossrail 2, the proposed interlinking north-south line.

Crossrail: January 2019

1/15

An unknown amount will be diverted from Crossrail 2 to cover the £17.6 billion total cost of completing Crossrail. The Standard has also learned that Mr Khan faces a race against time if he wants to accompany the Queen to the opening of Crossrail before next year’s mayoral elections.

Under City Hall “purdah” rules, political announcements are banned from March 23 next year. This would not prevent the line from opening, but it would prohibit Mr Khan from holding a celebratory event that could potentially influence elections in May 2020.

City Hall documents published this week confirm that Mr Khan signed a “mayoral decision form” last month approving the new Crossrail funding package.

It states that the Greater London Authority will raise £6.1 billion from business rates and the community infrastructure levy for Crossrail. This is up from last year’s estimate of £5.5 billion to £6 billion.

£6.1bn

amount raised from levy on businesses  and developers to fund Crossrail 

2038

date levy will end, four years later than expected and 28 years after it was introduced

The document, signed by Mr Khan, states: “The GLA estimates that the business rate supplement for Crossrail 1 will need to run for a further three years compared to the position prior to the announcement of this additional contribution.”

The GLA’s Crossrail debt may increase by another £750 million if costs soar further. The project is currently eating up about £50 million a week.

Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat leading the London Assembly inquiry into the Crossrail crisis, said: “The true cost of Crossrail’s delayed opening is that Crossrail 2 has suffered a serious and potentially fatal blow.”

A TfL spokeswoman said that businesses would not pay more than the £8.1 billion maximum originally envisaged in 2010.

She said hopes of ending the levy prior to 2038 had been scrapped as a consequence of the higher costs of Crossrail. She said the Crossrail 2 monies would only be redirected “for a limited time”.

Crossrail’s new chief executive Mark Wild is due to announce a “range” of dates next month for the opening of the route’s central section next year.

It had been due to be opened by the Queen on December 9 last year. A subsequent date of autumn 2019 has also been abandoned for 2020.

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