Wait of 20 years on HS2 compensation claims
Families living along the route of HS2 will have to wait two decades to learn whether they will receive compensation over the controversial £33 billion scheme, it can be revealed today.
It comes as a damning report published today revealed the project is facing a £3.3bn funding gap.
The National Audit Office also claimed the business case for HS2 was unconvincing, while it was doubtful it would represent value for money. And a businessman told a public meeting last night he hoped to launch the biggest lawsuit in European history to challenge HS2.
Trevor Forrester, of Ingestre, told a summit of the Kings Bromley Stop HS2 Action Group he wanted 300,000 people to join his fight.
Hundreds of Staffordshire villagers living near the planned line, which will cut through swathes of countryside up to Stone, face years of uncertainty until decisions over payouts for property blight are reached in 2033.
Claims through the Land Compensation Act 1973, which cover houses that do not need to be bulldozed but will suffer reduced values as a result of HS2, will only be settled a year after the railway is first used.
That means a 20-year wait for homeowners in villages surrounding Stafford, with phase two of the line forking north to Leeds and Manchester not due to be finished until 2032. Only those who can demonstrate 'pressing need' to move, and whose homes the Government will buy using compulsory purchase orders, will receive money before construction. The news comes after it emerged only one in four compensation claims have been granted for the first phase between London and Birmingham.
Former headteachers Gill and Roger Broadbent, of Ingestre, live 600m from the proposed route. Mrs Broadbent, 68, said: "It means that for the next 20 years we cannot do anything. We won't be able to sell our house because no-one will want to live here and we'd only get a fraction of the value."
