• MY photo shows HS2’s first completed building work in Camden – a “beetle hotel” has recently materialised in full public view at the Adelaide Nature Reserve.

So thanks to HS2, the beetle community will not be homeless this holiday. But this charitable act seems to be in sharp contrast to HS2’s uncompensated eviction at Euston of elderly homeowners (Forced to leave their homes, December 14).

But the beetle hotel is just another bizarre manifestation of HS2’s PR promises and ambiguous legal assurances intended to placate the local community. And there are unfortunate parallels between these two local communities.

For shortly after the beetles awake from hibernation next spring, they will hear the sound of chainsaws… as HS2 begin to cut down their woodland home.

Many of the evicted families at Euston were initially lulled into the same false security as the beetles, but then fell victims to HS2’s tricky interpretation of compensation law before the hoardings went up on their homes.

It goes like this. The ambiguous reassurance. HS2 tell homeowners they needn’t worry because HS2 will pay for the legal representation needed to steer them gracefully through compulsory purchase to a new home. Then the bad news. HS2’s initial gross undervaluation.Then the scam. HS2’s rejection of specialist CPO surveyors’ fee rates (as excessive).

This induces homeowners to appoint cheaper, non-specialist, surveyors and haggle about valuation. In contrast a specialist CPO surveyor would have applied to HS2 for advance payment of  90 per cent of the first offer (so that compensation money arrives before the bailiffs on eviction day) in the knowledge that an advance payment application does not imply acceptance of the offer.

HS2 themselves employ the best lawyers and surveyors who can use any haggling by homeowners as an excuse to delay the advance payment process.

And this results in the uncompensated evictions that you reported. And it can also undermine the final settlement (for example, in six years’ time).

HS2 recently identified to the Commons Public Accounts Committee that the local community pose a major project risk and they have argued that they have a duty not to burden taxpayers with more than minimum compensation. But the committee has just censured HS2 for ignoring that same duty by compensating their own staff with grossly inflated redundancy payments – £1.76million extra over statutory compensation for 94 individuals.

The PAC called it “a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money” and warned that HS2 Ltd “lacks basic financial controls… heightening the risk of fraud and financial errors”.

From the committee’s findings, it is plain to see that it is not the local community who are a major project risk but HS2’s own lack of integrity.

JEFF TRAVERS
Chairman, Adelaide Community Garden Club