The government has torpedoed prospects of reviving the scrapped HS2 leg between Birmingham and Leeds by announcing plans to sell off its property along the route.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander yesterday confirmed in a written ministerial statement that safeguarding directions, which blocked development along that part of the phase 2b corridor, had been removed to end “uncertainty” for affected landowners.
She added that the government would now initiate a programme to dispose of more than 550 properties it had acquired along the route.
“We will dispose of land and property in a sensible and sensitive way, ensuring value for money for the taxpayer and avoiding disruption to local property markets,” she said.
More than 550 properties previously acquired to protect the route are no longer needed and are expected to be sold on the open market from 2026, Alexander said.
Owners who were forced to sell their homes under statutory blight provisions will be offered the chance to repurchase them at market value, she added.
A small safeguarded zone near Leeds station will remain in place to support future upgrades to the station and connections to existing services.
The government has also closed four property compensation schemes linked to the safeguarding: the Rural Support Zone, Express Purchase, Rent Back, and Need to Sell programmes.
In January last year, the government removed safeguarding protection for the scrapped phase 2a route between Birmingham and Crewe, a decision described as a “mistake” by industry body High Speed Rail Group.
The portion of the scrapped 2b route between Crewe and Manchester now remains the only stretch of the northern leg of the route with safeguarding protections – for now, at least.
Ministers are expected to make a further announcement on that section alongside future plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Last week, on a BBC podcast, rail minster Lord Hendy had appeared to leave the door open for the northern legs to come back from the dead.
When he was asked if there was any chance the routes to Leeds and Manchester could be revived, he said: “The planning that went into HS2 was over a long number of years and to preemptorily stop it without any thought of what you would do instead has caused us to have to think very clearly and do a load of work.
“So I can’t pre-empt that and in any case our first job is to fix the project we have got now.”
He said that the future of the land was still under consultation.
Speaking to the same podcast, Andrew Gilligan, who was a policy adviser to former prime minister Rishi Sunak said that the calling of an early general election last year had stopped its plans for an immediate sell-off of HS2 land.
He said: “I was expecting us to go to the country to have an election in Autumn 2024 rather than July.
“If we had gone to the Autumn we would have sold the land by then. We would have started it, anyway.”
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Colin Marrs