MP Frank Dobson with Drummond Street traders whose businesses are threatened by the HS2 project

Published: 31 January, 2013
by TOM FOOT
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HS2 bosses confirmed the worst fears of home and business owners when they said that demolition needed for the £33billion high-speed rail link would lead to financial losses for some people in Camden.

At a meeting in Maria Fidelis School on Thursday, Laura Wise, of HS2 Ltd – the company funded by the government to manage the massive project –  said: “There was never a commitment to guarantee no financial loss.”

MP Frank Dobson said the statement directly contradicted one made in the House of Commons by former transport secretary Philip Hammond. 

Speaking in a Commons debate the following day, the Labour MP said: “The transport secretary stated that ‘it is right and proper that individuals who suffer serious financial loss in the national interest should be compensated’.

“Despite that, at last night’s meeting, officials said many people living near Euston, including some who had exercised right-to-buy from the council, would not be fully compensated. And others would not be compensated at all. 

“The minister is saying one thing in the House of Commons, and another thing is being said outside it.”

Property values have already started to plummet as a result of the proposed decade of major work in Camden, Thursday’s Euston Community Forum meeting heard.

Many people with homes a few metres from HS2’s “safeguarding zone” are facing a decade of blight, but will not get a penny in compensation. 

Particularly affected are owners of former council flats in blocks earmarked for demolition on the Regent’s Park Estate.

According to a land survey by the council, a two-bed flat there would be worth around £230,000 but buying an identical flat on the private market in the same area would cost about £450,000. 

That means leaseholders forced to sell their homes would not be able to buy again in the same area, or probably anywhere in Greater London. On top of that, council tenants are not being offered guarantees of social housing elsewhere in Camden despite earlier promises.

They are being offered a home loss payment of “up to” £4,700, the meeting heard.

Euston Community Forum chairman Robert Latham raised the plight of long-standing elderly residents and the Bangladeshi community, who are being hit hardest by the planned destruction of Drummond Street in Euston and the Regent’s Park estate.

He told the meeting: “They are being given no compensation at all so that HS2 can cut journeys to Birmingham by 20 minutes in a project that is for people who are predominantly white, predominantly male and predominantly rich. There are equality issues.”

The meeting heard that HS2 had failed to send out letters in Bengali.

Some residents’ gardens fall into the area needed by the project, but not the whole house. The meeting was told that even they will not be compensated fully under current plans. In an anomaly, Exmouth Mews, in Drummond Street, is surrounded by the “safeguarding area”, but not inside it.

The meeting closed with a call to widen the area in which homes and businesses are compensated fully.

The compensation consultation closes today (Thursday).