HS2 has been accused of “madness” after new figures reveal it has spent £37m of taxpayers’ cash buying up homes – long after parts of the high-speed rail line were scrapped.
Two years ago, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak scrapped phase 2 of the HS2 line from the West Midlands to Manchester – but The Independent can reveal that bosses continued to purchase properties along the now-axed route, shelling out £25.5m on 25 sites until October this year.
At least £1m was spent on 10 of the properties, more than £2m on three of them. Five were bought in the affluent Altrincham area, just outside Manchester.
HS2, on behalf of the Department for Transport, also spent £11.7m on 30 properties along the eastern leg of Phase 2, from Birmingham to Leeds, after it was cancelled in two sections in 2021 and 2023, figures obtained via Freedom of Information laws show.
HS2, which has long come under fire for repeated delays and soaring costs despite being scaled back, said it was honouring property purchases started before line cancellations and that the purchases “inevitably take time to complete”. Measures to protect land for the originally-proposed line, which were in place between Birmingham and Leeds until July this year, also meant property owners could still sell to HS2 despite that part of the line being scrapped.
Former Tory minister Sir Gavin Williamson, whose Staffordshire constituency has been heavily impacted by the beleaguered project, called the spending “insane”, while Stop HS2 campaigner Joe Rukin described it as “a waste and a scandal”.
Sir Gavin said: “It just goes to show the madness of HS2. The reality is it’s two years on since the announcement of the cancellation of HS2 Phase Two [Handsacre to Manchester]… and frankly, you know, the fact that they’re still buying properties, it is insane.
“Even if they’ve entered into legal agreements with people prior to the HS2 phase two being stopped, that should have been resolved within six months of that announcement, and now there shouldn’t be any new properties purchased at all.
“Indeed, what you’d expect to see is actually properties being sold in order to be able to pay money back to the Treasury.”
After the lifting of measures to safeguard land along the eastern leg to Leeds, the government announced it would put 500 properties, many of them now being rented, back on the market from January.
However, no decision has been made on properties on land where the HS2 line would have connected north of Birmingham to Manchester, as ministers consider plans for a replacement rail route.
Sir Gavin called the plan “fantasy politics” and urged the government to begin “liberating” the land immediately. In one village in his constituency called Hopton, Sir Gavin said a third of homes were bought by HS2.
In the Staffordshire village of Whitmore Heath, people have told The Independent their community had been ripped apart, with some 35 of the 50 homes bought by HS2, with one turned into a cannabis farm while it lay empty.
Lichfield MP Dave Robertson also told The Independent: “This [the £37m spend] is yet another example of the gross failings of oversight by HS2, and people in my area will be furious about it. I recently met with Mike Brown [the new chairman of HS2], and I know he wants to do better. But this shows just how big the task ahead of him is and how far HS2 needs to go to rebuild public trust.”
As reported in August, HS2 said it had spent £633m purchasing property for the now-abandoned sections of the high-speed line, with only the line from London to Birmingham still on course to be built.
As of May this year, 73 per cent of the 1,475 residential properties held by HS2 were rented out, but many sat empty due to the cost of bringing them up to a “lettable standard”, or because they were soon to be demolished.
Mr Rukin, whose anti-HS2 group has supported many communities along the axed line, said: “It is sadly typical of the way in which HS2 Ltd have treated the public, that they have continued to buy up land which they knew they would not need. This is both a waste and a scandal.
“Millions of pounds have been wasted on the cost of buying this land, and it is scandalous HS2 Ltd not only forced people to sell up, but also due to the capital gains tax they had to pay, many of those people cannot be able to afford to buy their own homes and land back.”
In Staffordshire, Ben Wilkes, told The Independent he was still waiting for answers from HS2 on a cancelled section of track which was set to go through part of his charity’s four-and-a-half-acre site.
The trustee of the Border Collie Trust, who said HS2 had offered to buy the trust’s land for £800,000, said: “In a time that the government says it is under constant pressure, such as the demands of the NHS, it’s extraordinary to see such a spend on these properties. It’s like HS2 has been given a blank cheque.”
Part of the reason behind a plan for a replacement HS2 northern leg to Manchester is to link HS2 with the Northern Powerhouse Rail [NPR], which the government is expected to announce in the new year.
Henri Murison, chief executive of the NPR, told The Independent that homes bought along the axed parts of the HS2 line, including a section from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly, could still be needed for future rail schemes.
A planned stabling facility for HS2 trains in Scotland, which was part of the cancelled Phase 2 of the project, could also still be used, he said.
He said: “Whether it be for NPR or a potential railway from Manchester down to Birmingham, there are various bits of HS2 that will never be built on by HS2 Ltd, but where the government may choose to still want to build new railway lines.
“The worst thing in the world to do, never mind how traumatic it will have been for people to have their houses purchased when there was a risk of a new railway, would be to sell land back to either original landowners or other people, and then come back a few years later and do the same thing again.”
HS2 has maintained, by buying properties, it was following instructions from the government, which said commitments to aquiring property before cancellations were to be honoured.
A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said: “In the interests of fairness, and in line with our legal obligations, we have been clear that phase 2 property transactions started before the cancellation of this section of HS2 will be honoured. These acquisitions inevitably take time to complete.
“This activity is part of a wider stream of work to close the phase 2 programme in an orderly fashion, while being mindful of the needs of local communities and the taxpayer.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said cancelling sales agreed before phase 2 was scrapped would have been unfair to property owners.
“We will maximise the money taxpayers get back from properties being sold that are no longer needed,” they said.
