• THURSDAY was a milestone for Camden residents’ groups engaged with HS2. Camden published their long overdue minutes of their September 2017 Euston Strategic Board (ESB) meeting which residents have been requesting for months.

Residents’ groups have previously lobbied councillors and MPs and even tried Freedom of Information requests, all without result.

However ironically the first item in the minutes that caught our eye on Thursday was that Cavendish Elithorn of Department for Transport announced to the other stakeholders (HS2, NR,  TfL, GLA, and Camden) that 2018 would be “the Year of Engagement”… so now with the year one-third over… not an auspicious start.

So why is the ESB so important? The ESB controls the development of the Euston Masterplan and is chaired by Georgia Gould (leader of Camden Council) who Camden officers tell us regularly reports to residents’ groups on the progress of HS2’s Masterplan development. Officers tell us that such reports are above their pay grade (as officers).

But so far, even in the “Year of Engagement”, there have been no reports. And both Camden and HS2 deny that a Masterplan exists. The December ESB minutes shed light on this denial however. In the minutes HS2 clarify that the Masterplan is called “the Landowner’s Preferred (Masterplan) Option”.

They say it is just for the guidance of the developer to whom DfT has sold Euston and they are at liberty to build their commercial development to an entirely different Masterplan.

What is at stake is the scale and location of redevelopment at Euston. DfT announced that HS2 would unlock 4.78million square feet of extra space at Euston. And our FoI requests reveal that this space is intended to “cross fund” the new station.

But HS2’s plans for the new station show only seven development plots which cannot provide more than one-third of this DfT space target. And Arup told us last month that they are currently producing tender drawings for the foundations of these seven blocks (known as overstation development enabling work).

So what is at stake is the location of the rest of the 4.78m sq ft of space. Will it be over the old station and Euston Square Gardens? Or will the rest of Euston be turned into a redevelopment site?

Hopefully Camden will reveal HS2’s “Landowner’s Preferred Option” plan… very soon in this “Year of Engagement”. So far engagement with HS2 has been restricted to the subject of terms of reference for engagement… to the extent that residents’ groups are refusing to meet HS2.

JEFF TRAVERS
Address supplied