When Phill Dann heard the news that Rishi Sunak was considering scrapping HS2 north of Birmingham, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Ten years ago, he was living happily in what should have been his forever home in rural Staffordshire.
The house – one of about 50 properties in the hillside hamlet of Whitmore Heath – had everything the chartered accountant had ever wanted: four bedrooms, a landscaped garden and a private bar with brass taps.
Then one day in 2013, he got back from a weekend skiing trip to find the planned high-speed rail link connecting London to Manchester was to run beneath the house. A vast tunnel was to be bored straight through the hill. In a letter, HS2 Ltd apologised for the inconvenience.
Mr Dann – like more than half of those living in the hamlet – saw no option but to sell his beloved home, where he had lived since 2001.
“And for what?” he asks today. “For absolutely nothing. We had our entire lives pulled from under us, and a decade of mental agony trying to get through it. And then? The government decides what we knew all along anyway: the whole thing’s a bad idea and a vanity project for politicians.”
The saga of Whitmore Heath may be one of the most shameful chapters in the increasingly protracted history of HS2.
In other areas of the country, homeowners within 120m of the planned line have been entitled to sell their properties to the government or receive other compensation through so-called “blight” schemes. Nearly 1,000 properties – ranging from mansions to terrace houses, but also including some businesses – have been sold this way, including 530 on the stretch to Leeds which was axed back in 2021, racking up a bill of nearly £164m for the government.
Steve Colclough describes the rail project as ‘a national scandal from start to finish’— (Colin Drury)
Another 239 properties have been sold between the West Midlands and Crewe, plus another 185 between Crewe and Greater Manchester - at a total cost of £396m.
This is the part of the route that is now in jeopardy after The Independent revealed Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, were in talks about scrapping the leg amid spiralling costs and delays.
But Mr Dann and other residents in Whitmore Heath – a rural area southwest of Newcastle-under-Lyme – were told, because the work would be done under their homes, they were entitled to nothing. They would, in effect, simply have to put up with the UK’s biggest ever infrastructure project being dug under their foundations.
“They blighted our homes and showed absolutely zero compassion,” the 59-year-old says today.
For four years, he and other residents fought their case. Mr Dann sold his business so he could focus full time on the battle. Eventually, HS2 agreed to buy people out. He was able to finally move on in late 2017.
Many properties along the route lie empty, although at least one has been taken over by squatters— (Stoke Sentinel/BPM Media )
“It was four years of mental torture, where you couldn’t plan your future because you were in total limbo,” he says today. “It ruined my mental health. It ruined the mental health of so many people round here. I had a neighbour in his Seventies who died within a few months of selling up. His family say the stress killed him, and I believe it. There was a total lack of humanity in the way we were treated.”
And now, how does Mr Dann feel knowing there’s a significant chance the line will not be built?
“I can’t think about it,” he says. “I refuse to go back to that place I was in, mentally, during those years. It would only cause me distress.”
He has not been back to Whitmore Heath for several years now: “The trauma would be too much,” he says.
Phill Dann refuses to return to the site of his former home— (Supplied)
But it is, in any case, a different place today.
Thirty-five of the roughly 50 homeowners there sold up when HS2 finally agreed to buy. A few, today, are said to be rented out but others lie obviously empty with padlocks on their gates. At least one has been taken over by squatters. Remaining residents say that others have been turned into cannabis factories.
“Beautiful homes – some worth more than £1m – just left to rot and ruin,” says Steve Colclough. “What’s happened here is a national scandal from start to finish.”
He himself lives half a mile away, down the hill in the adjacent village of Whitmore.
His 19th century cottage looks directly across fields that HS2 will (or would have) thundered across. Because the line was due to go on huge concrete stilts here, the viaduct would have become their permanent skyline. Because the property is outside that 120m boundary, there was no option for them to sell.
As such, the pair have spent almost a decade fighting the plans.
“It’s been years of hell,” the 66-year-old construction company director says today. “You try and get on with your life but it plays on your mind every day.”
The couple – who bought the place in 1998 – felt trapped.
Colclough with fellow campaigner Deborah Mallender— (Colin Drury)
On the one hand, they didn’t want to have a home in the shadow of a vast railway line – and years of construction work before it. On the other, they couldn’t sell because no-one would want to buy.
“You work hard all your life and try and do the right thing,” the 66-year-old says. “And then something like this happens and it destroys everything. They are robbing my retirement years from me.”
News that the line may be cancelled has offered some hope but not exactly joy. He will celebrate only when – or if – it is officially announced. But even then, the relief will be tainted by the years of stress.
“It’s a fight we should never have had to take on in the first place,” he says.
Construction work on HS2 near Lichfield earlier this year— (Getty)
A fellow campaigner Deborah Mallender, from the neighbouring village of Madeley, agrees.
The retired university researcher says even if ministers do confirm cancellation of the line there must be accountability.
“This has ruined lives,” the 63-year-old says. “They cannot just walk away. We need answers as to why people were ever put through this.”
Paul Northcott, a Conservative councillor in Newcastle-under-Lyme, said the impact on people in the area had been “life changing”.
Some are “doggedly waiting for the right offer”, while others are still waiting to be compensated.
For those reluctant to sell up, the government is able to force them to sell using compulsory purchase orders.
“They’re just sitting in a property that they can’t sell on the market, waiting on the whims of HS2 to sort it out. The area’s been blighted,” he said.
Another home in Whitmore Heath bought by HS2— (Stoke Sentinel/BPM Media )
“People will be over the moon that this may be scrapped. A lot of them will resent the fact they’ve had to change – fairly majorly – their life plans. But there will be a huge sigh of relief because of the impact that the work would have had on the area.”
Joe Rukin, treasurer at the Stop HS2 campaign group, claimed the government had been “exceptionally inconsistent” in choosing which properties they would and would not buy, with a “very long-winded process” leaving families in limbo.
“You have a situation exactly as you’d expect – a massive grey faceless corporation against a homeowner,” Mr Rukin said. “Selling your home is stressful at best of times, but it’s bloody stressful when it’s the government you’re trying to sell it to, and they’ve been beating people down for the best part of a decade.”
A government spokesperson said: “You would expect No 10 and the Treasury to regularly discuss large infrastructure projects. Spades are already in the ground on the HS2 programme, and we remain focused on delivering that.”
Additional reporting by Andy Gregory
