Transport for London’s commissioner should consider his position over his handling of the much-delayed Crossrail project, according to a damning City Hall report.

The London assembly transport committee accuses Mike Brown of downplaying risks about the £17.6bn flagship infrastructure scheme in weekly updates to the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.

An independent reviewer of the east-west railway through London reported “significant risks” nearly 12 months before last year’s planned opening but they were not properly acted on, the committee’s report also found.

Crossrail’s leadership “fostered an overly optimistic culture, where risks were largely overlooked instead of escalated” and “the completion date overpowered any professional scepticism or critical assessment of risk”, it added.

The report, entitled Derailed: Getting Crossrail back on track, calls for greater transparency and tighter controls on TfL, as well as singling out Brown for criticism. “Given the strong evidence presented in this report, we recommend that the Commissioner reflects on whether he is fit to fulfil his role in TfL,” it says.

Brown, who was paid £375,000 in 2017/8, was appointed commissioner for TfL in September 2015. The launch date of Crossrail, which has been beset by delays and budgetary problems, was supposed to be in December last year but could now be as late as 2021.

Liberal Democrat London assembly member Caroline Pidgeon, who chairs the transport committee, said: “It is a complete tragedy that one of the most highly anticipated engineering projects the world has ever seen has found itself in a mess of overspending, mismanagement and an embarrassingly long delay.

“Crossrail was supposed to be the beacon of modern, 21st-century engineering but its name is now tarnished with shame in the eyes of the London taxpayer who will have to foot the bill until its completion.

“The inability of senior figures in the project to push past their obsession with a December 2018 launch date is one of the main reasons why their dream did not become a reality.”

Pidgeon added: “It is shameful that nobody at a senior level is willing to take responsibility for the failure of the project thus far.””

Crossrail, which will be known as the Elizabeth line when it eventually opens, will link Heathrow and Reading in the west through new tunnels in central London to surface overground east of the capital to Shenfield and Abbey Wood.

Last year, Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild was parachuted in to lead the project after delays were revealed in August. The project, funded by TfL and the Department for Transport, had a budget of £15.9bn prior to 2010, which was reduced as part of government cuts before again rising to £17.6bn with costs expected to go up again.

The City Hall report found that Crossrail’s executive “did not have the skills required at the later stages of the programme to adequately assess and understand risk as the project moved from construction to operations”.

The platform at Farringdon station on the Elizabeth line of the Crossrail project. Photograph: © Crossrail Ltd

It also states: “Evidence from emails between Crossrail Limited and TfL suggests that communications to the mayor were being managed by the TfL commissioner, Mike Brown.

“Instead of communicating risks head on, these were downplayed in the weekly updates to the mayor.”

Despite claiming Khan was kept in the dark by Brown’s alleged watering down of communications, the report does cast doubt on the mayor’s claim that he was not made aware of the Crossrail delay until two days before an announcement was made on 31 August last year. It came after Sir Terry Morgan, who resigned as chair of Crossrail in December last year, alleged Khan had been told about the delay as early as July.

The report says: “Crossrail documents strongly suggest that sponsors [TfL and Department for Transport] started collaborating on the communications strategy for the delay in mid August. This, in addition to the known financial challenges, makes it difficult to understand how the mayor claims he was not aware of the imminent risk of delay.”

Khan said last night: “Both the TfL Commissioner and I have been fully transparent about what we knew about the delays to Crossrail, including around the key information that the previous Crossrail leadership gave to TfL and DfT. What is clear is that as joint sponsors, TfL and the Department for Transport should have been told much more, far sooner by the previous Crossrail leadership.”

The report also points out that Jacobs Engineering Ltd, brought in to independently review the project, “reported significant risks to the December 2018 opening as early as January 2018” but TfL and DfT “did not sufficiently act upon these reports of risk”, instead accepting “Crossrail’s assurances that no threat existed to the planned opening of the central section”.

A TfL spokesperson said: “It is clear that the responsibility for the delay to the Crossrail project lies with the former management of Crossrail Ltd. It is entirely incorrect to suggest the transport commissioner, or anyone at TfL, kept any information from the mayor.

“The commissioner works to ensure that the mayor is kept informed of everything going on in transport in London and to ensure the information he receives is clear, consistent and accurate.

“As the commissioner made clear to the Transport committee, it would not have been right to allow material to go to the mayor that was incorrect or inconsistent with information that the management of Crossrail Ltd themselves were presenting to TfL and the mayor in regular face to face meetings.”

A Mayor of London spokesman said: “Sadiq has every confidence in Mike Brown. Responsibility for the inadequate information provided about the Crossrail delay lies squarely with the former management of Crossrail Ltd.”



