Open letter to Sir David Higgins ref HS1/2 Link
Please can you rethink or abandon the plan to put an HS2 link through the heart of Camden Town. Please consider the following arguments:
- Social and Business costs: This is a vibrant business, tourist and residential area which is densely populated. The link will destroy many aspects of this area with no planning gains. This plan could mean the loss of up to 10,000 jobs and £750m of business during the construction period and afterwards
- Closure of bridges and roads: This will have a major impact on all London traffic that uses Camden’s main road arteries. These costs are likely to be enormous in terms of lost time to business and public services. Have the costs of such disruption have been correctly calculated and included in the cost of the HS2 Link project?
- Pollution: The construction of such a link would have a major impact on already high levels of noise and pollution whilst parts of Camden Town are already exceeding European safe particulate limits. Government has an obligation to minimise pollution but in this case it seems happy to collude in generating excess levels and ignoring all pollution legislation – this can and should be corrected.
Please reconsider for the sake of the many businesses and residents who are about to be catastrophically displaced and inconvenienced by this proposed scheme.
Yours faithfully
ASNRA