Peaky Blinders creator calls HS2 ‘gamechanger’ for West Midlands

‘We want to make Birmingham a place you want to go as a destination,’ says Steven Knight, standing at site of Digbeth Loc. Studios. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

The Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight said HS2 has been a gamechanger for regeneration in the West Midlands, as data revealed the train line has created a £10bn economic boost to the region since it was given the green light.

A report by HS2 has found that within three “impact zones” close to the new line in the West Midlands, planning applications have increased by 66% since the project was given royal assent in 2017, four times higher than the rate outside the zones.

In the same period, there was a 484% increase in the number of homes planned in those areas, 14 times greater than elsewhere in the region, as well as a 200% increase in planned floor space, including commercial developments.

Jon Thompson, the executive chair of HS2, said: “For too long the debate on the wider economic benefits of high-speed rail in the UK has relied on anecdotal evidence.

“This report gives definitive proof that investor appetite, regeneration activity and investment close to HS2’s regional assets has surged.”

Construction of the London to Birmingham line is well under way, with 350 active sites across London and the West Midlands, and more than a third of tunnelling already complete.

The project has been beset by spiralling costs, with Thompson telling MPs in January the estimated total had ballooned to as much as £66bn.

The research, the first time the wider economic impact of HS2 in the West Midlands has been quantified, estimated the project had triggered the creation of 41,000 new homes, more than 30,000 jobs and 704,000 sq metres of floor space in the region.

The findings were based on analysis of more than 3,000 planning applications from July 2010 to June 2023, predating the prime minister’s decision in October to scrap the second phase of HS2 to Manchester.

Knight, who is building a film and TV studio in Digbeth, a former heavy industry and manufacturing area of Birmingham with HS2 on its doorstep, said he hoped the longer line would still go ahead in future.

“I don’t think this story is over in terms of the extension of the line,” he said. “There is no question that internationally, something like HS2 coming to an area means a hell of a lot. When the line is completed, Birmingham will be in a different place in terms of time and geography.

“We’re building our studio in what will effectively be, in terms of travel time, zone five of the London Underground. It’s a gamechanger.”

Knight’s Digbeth Loc. Studios, a 7,500 sq metre site of abandoned Victorian buildings, will soon be home to three film studios, production offices and a co-working space, and is where he intends to create his new Peaky Blinders movie in September.

Construction has also started on the nearby Tea Factory, the BBC’s new West Midlands headquarters in the home of the old Typhoo Tea factory that has been empty since 1978.

Creatives and small businesses have raised concerns about the rapid regeneration of the area, with fears that old architecture will be lost and people pushed out by rising prices.

Knight said he understood people’s reservations. “Digbeth is wonderful – it’s rough at the edges but it’s a very creative place, and we want the same people who have been transforming it into what it is now to be welcomed in and working with us,” he said.

“We don’t want to land the TV and film industry into Digbeth like a spaceship, and throw barbed wire around it. We want to make this a new industry that’s planted into the soil of this area and this community.”

He added that although regeneration would still have happened without HS2 – he has been working on his studio plans for nearly a decade – the train line has acted as a catalyst for activity in the region.

“There has been a reluctance to look at the proximity of London as a positive in Birmingham,” he said. “I think in the past, Birmingham’s proximity to London has meant that national government has overlooked it – it has leapfrogged Birmingham, and gone farther north.

“What we want to do is make Birmingham a place you want to go as a destination. HS2 is just adding more noise, more energy, more power to the whole thing that’s happening here.”