A Government minister is arguing land near the proposed HS2 rail network should be sold cheaply for homes, despite a report warning that the housing market has “completely stagnated” as a result of the plans.
Planning Minister Nick Boles MP has said he wants developers to buy land near the proposed line while it is cheap, amid warnings that homes on the route are becoming increasingly difficult to sell.
The Chron reported last week that a South Northamptonshire Council report showed properties which are now valued at as little as half the pre-blight value are still unsold.
But in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Boles said: “It is one of my new year’s resolutions to seek a meeting with my opposite number in the Department for Transport to understand their perspective.
“What are we doing to make sure when we are putting in HS2 or when we are putting in major road schemes we are actually thinking from the beginning – because that is the cheapest place to do it – about how it can be used to actually unblock new settlements or other miniature schemes?”
If built, the line would cut through south Northamptonshire between Upper Boddington and Brackley.
In Transport Questions in the Commons last week, South Northamptonshire Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom discovered only 65 homes had been purchased out of 418 which have applied for compensation under a Government scheme to support homeowners affected by HS2.
A total of 284 were rejected, 24 pending a decision, and 10 withdrawn.
Joe Rukin, Stop HS2 campaign manager, said: “The latest figures for completed compensation agreements show the Government has little interest in genuinely compensating people, some of whom have seen the value of their biggest lifetime investment halve, simply because someone has drawn a line on a map.
“In saying that developers should buy up land near HS2 while it is cheap, Nick Boles might as well have given the people whose lives are being ruined by HS2 a punch in the face. Boles has shown yet again that as far as this Government is concerned, real people don’t matter, private profits do. It is amazing to think that his big idea for getting people onto the housing ladder is by building permanently blighted houses.”
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