Published: February 23, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

A NEW protest group campaigning to stop the government’s high-speed rail plans cutting through Camden has been formed.

A meeting on Monday at the Crown and Goose pub in Delancey Street saw the group established to represent residents living in the Camden Town area who will be affected by the HS2 plans. While the borough already has the Pan-Camden HS2 Alliance, an umbrella organisation that includes the Regent’s Park estate area and Primrose Hill, people living around Park Village East, Granby Terrace, Parkway and Mornington Crescent have now added their voices.

With the route due to send trains hurtling along a Victorian cutting that has Park Village East on one side and Granby Terrace opposite, those living nearby were shown plans and heard that the scheme would see the cutting lowered by more than 13 metres.

Co-organiser,  Louisa Auletta told the meeting they were in a unique stretch of the HS2 route, which will go from Euston to Birmingham at a cost of around £17billion.

She added: “Where we are is the only stretch out in the open in central London, and there has been no environmental impact assessment made. People feel like they just do not know what is happening.”

Organiser Kate Macmillan said: “This is the highest density of homes to be found along the whole route.”