Major HS2 works have become a common sight 

• A FULSOME letter from Jeff Travers of Euston Design (Euston: a window of opportunity, September 8) in response to my letter the week earlier commenting on the proposed 18-storey tower blocks over the HS2 station, (HS2 Euston land-grab!).

Euston Design is listed as an architectural designer working from the site of the former Bree Louise pub in Euston Street. Mr Travers confirms that it is a land-grab, and that it enables profit between compulsory purchase and development values.

This, he says, would enable the skyscrapers to fund the HS2 rail project that will save 20 minutes on the journey from Birmingham to Euston, itself a 10-minute walk away from connecting to HS1 at St Pancras. Was the HS2 project never assessed as being cost-effective or not until now?

After dismissing feasibility of having one station above the other he goes on to say that this will now be done, albeit the existing rebuilt above HS2 rather than HS2 built above the existing retained.

Later he says that Camden’s earlier support for such a double-deck alternative to HS2’s land-grabbing design was short lived because “the government insisted that Camden should drop their call for an investigation of this more beneficial station design option…”.

Jeff Travers addresses my concern of loss of the St James Gardens and children’s playground. After being rebuilt over the new HS2 station the current Network Rail station site can, he explains, be redeveloped including to permit reinstatement of “green spaces that have been destroyed”.

This was already over five years ago. How many generations of children are to be deprived of the green space and its playground before they are reinstated in redevelopment of Euston station to start only after it itself is rebuilt over the new HS2 station?

ADRIAN BETHAM RIBA
Euston Street, NW1