The never-ending story of HS2

Crewe is a railway town. It always has been. The town is one of several in the Cheshire East Unitary Authority, and the larger of the two towns in the Crewe and Nantwich parliamentary constituency. Crewe had high hopes riding on HS2. Cheshire East has spent £11m preparing for it, while the lost benefit to Crewe is estimated at £2bn by the local enterprise partnership. On 7 November, we learnt phase 2 of the Royal Arcade redevelopment has been put on hold. What should have been a new bus station, cinema and entertainment complex looks as if it will become a bus stop and a park for the time being. Must Crewe continue to struggle? Will the new proposals for infrastructure development help? They will not. Crewe is not on any of the routes. The West Coast mainline is the main north-south line through Crewe station, with important spurs to Liverpool, Chester and North Wales; Manchester; The Potteries and Nottingham; and Shrewsbury, Hereford and South Wales. HS2 trains running north of Birmingham will be running on the West Coast mainline through Crewe, adding to congestion on a line which is already too busy. Further afield The damage is not confined to Crewe. Cheshire grassland is known for its ability to produce milk. These are the fields that sent milk to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. The area around Crewe and Nantwich, extending into Staffordshire and Shropshire, is also the home of traditional Cheshire cheese. This was the cheese that exclusively fed the Royal Navy from the 16th century. Many of these fields are now a mess because HS2 contractors had already started work on the route of the new line. The nightmare that was HS2 for these farmers will now, for some of them, begin all over again. On the face of it, the abandonment of the project may look like welcome news for the farmers. But for many of them, plans are far too well advanced for the farmers simply to pick up again where they were before HS2. For example, many farmers have had to redesign the layout and equipment on their farms. There are some farms where HS2 land requirements have included key farm buildings, prompting farmers to bring forward future investment into new buildings on new sites. Plans have been made, permissions obtained, funding arranged, contracts secured. These arrangements do not unwind easily. Dairy farming is one of the most complex farming systems to manage. Cows must be milked every single day. Adequate supplies of grass and other feeds must be available. A large continuous water supply is essential. The dairy must be able to collect the milk. Hygiene requirements are paramount for the quality of the milk itself and for the health of the cows. Calving cows must be cared for; young calves must be reared patiently; and farm waste must be removed and stored before ultimate disposal. There are no “days off” in managing the transition from existing farm buildings to new ones on a dairy farm. Alongside this there are other crops and livestock on most farms, and grass must be harvested for the winter months and preserved in airtight conditions as silage over up to 10 months of the year. What happens now? The National Infrastructure Commission has criticised the haste with which the government wishes to dispose of HS2 land. Sir John Armitt, its chair, has already warned of the increasing congestion which is likely to be seen on the railway network north of Birmingham. Armitt has called for a pause in land sales to leave options open. The Times reported on 20 October that, “A fire sale of land bought for HS2 north of Birmingham is set to cost the taxpayer more than £100m”, claiming that 2,900 acres of land has already been bought between Birmingham and Crewe at a cost of £205m. Under the Crichel Down Rules the owners of the land taken are likely to be offered first refusal. But will they want their land back if its agricultural capacity has already been destroyed in preparations for the new railway, and in some cases having significantly restructured farm businesses around the loss of land to HS2? Many will have passed a point of no return. And what about another category? Owners who have received all the notices and are mid-way through negotiations for the sale of their land, for example. Some of these owners will also be too far in. Careful consideration will need to be given to the legal position on compensation for compulsory purchase. Have full responses been made to notices to treat? Has the deadline for HS2 to withdraw its notices passed? In such a case it is arguable that HS2 is bound to proceed with the purchase. But for landowners who will be happy to keep their land, what of the expenditure now wasted on preparations, advice, revising farming arrangements and all the rest of it? If compulsory purchase is to retain any public and professional credibility at all it is vital that these claimants are treated fairly, even generously as HS2 pulls out north of Birmingham. Will blight notices fall with the line itself? Take comfort from the Lands Tribunal’s judgment in Burn v North Yorkshire County Council [1992] 2 EGLR 193. The withdrawal of a project after the authority’s counter-notice is not enough to contest the blight notice itself. On the other hand the Court of Appeal in Mancini v Coventry City Council [1984] 1 EGLR 178 would not uphold a blight notice where the authority had cancelled its scheme between receiving a blight notice and serving a counter-notice to say that the property was not blighted. You may have thought the nightmare was over. For some it is only just beginning. Charles Cowap is a rural practice chartered surveyor and chartered environmentalist Image © Maureen McLean/Shutterstock