Published: February 2nd, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

THE Town Hall is set to issue a legal challenge to the government if it does not back down and rethink plans to drive a high-speed rail link through the heart of the borough.

The dire warning of dragging the Coalition’s flagship transport project through the courts was raised last night (Wednesday) at a packed public meeting by the council’s regeneration chief, Labour councillor Sarah Hayward.

She told the meeting, at Christchurch School in  Redhill Street – a stone’s throw from homes earmarked for demolition – that if the proposals go ahead, she believed the government’s consultation and planning was flawed.

And she warned that legal action could commence to force a U-turn.

She said: “If any house or business is lost or damaged, we will seek to ensure that alternative local provision, and adequate compensation, is given.

“We will fight for every home, home by home, business by business, brick by brick. If we do not get the assurances we need from the Secretary of State, we will seriously consider legal action against High Speed 2 Ltd.”

The HS2 route, estimated to cost £33billion, will link London to Birmingham.

The scheme is planned to run through a tunnel from Old Oak Common to Euston. It would emerge around Primrose Hill and four blocks on the Regent’s Park estate would have to be demolished.

Euston station would be completely rebuilt.

The meeting, made up of residents from the Regent’s Park Estate, and members of the Pan-Camden HS2 Campaign, heard a panel made up of Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson, Labour councillors Tulip Siddiq and Sarah Hayward, Pan-Camden HS2 Alliance Tim Stockton and Camden planning officer Ed Watson outline the project’s details – and how they proposed to fight it.

Mr Dobson told the audience he believed the fight was far from over.

He said: “We should not abandon our campaign to get the route to stop at Old Oak Common.”

He reminded the 200-strong audience that they had fought to block the Channel Tunnel terminating in an underground concrete box beneath King’s Cross station.

Mr Dobson added: “That got as far as a hybrid bill and was going to be pushed through, before they realised it was a crackers idea.

“It will be the most awful civil engineering mess. It will be like an earthquake.”

Azad Ali, a Regent’s Park resident of 36 years, said: “We should have giant posters stretching right down Hampstead Road saying: ‘These are our homes. We don’t want HS2 here’.”

Leaseholder Eira ­Gibson, who recently became a mother, said she feared the home she had invested in would lose its value while politicians dithered.

And the spectre of Drummond Street – renowned nationally for its award-winning curry restaurants – turning into a ghost town was raised. Jo Hurford, who lives in Grafton Way, has set up a Facebook group called “Save Drummond Street”.

She said: “It would be a tragedy for it to disappear.”

Park Village East resident Marion Kamlish said she wanted the same action that saw RBS boss Fred Goodwin lose his knighthood taken against Lord Adonis, the Labour peer who first drew up HS2.

She said: “He calls himself Lord Adonis of Camden Town – that moniker should be taken away from him immediately, in light of what he wants to do to our area.”

More rail disruption? Project ‘could affect the Overground’

THE route map for HS2 shows it emerging from a tunnel by Primrose Hill and heading into Euston.

But there are plans to link it with HS1 at St Pancras – and Kentish Town Lib Dem councillor Paul Braithwaite has warned the route would mean major disruption to the popular London Overground service as it would involve laying extra track next to existing lines snaking though the borough on a Victorian viaduct.

He said: “The implication is it would mean long-term risk of disruption.”

But the allegations it would lead to a reduced service on the Overground were dismissed by Transport for London.

A spokesman for London Overground said: “There is nothing to indicate that HS2 will impact on London Overground at all at this stage.”