Thursday 7 June 2018

How HS2 Fails Sheffield

Our Response to this article today in the Sheffield Star

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/voices-will-hs2-be-positive-or-negative-for-sheffield-1-9198090

The current HS2 plans are damaging for Sheffield, firstly in the behaviour of Sheffield City Council spending hundreds of thousands of pounds including a £6,000 breakfast briefing to lobby HS2 Limited to move the Station to Sheffield Victoria and see the high speed line serve it. But instead all Julie Dore got was Sheffield Midland Station with fewer possibilities for redevelopment and fewer trains on slow speed classic compatible lines on a spur from Chesterfield and an unfunded promise of a slower loop connection to Leeds. 





Sheffield is now a backwater with South Yorkshire unity in tatters as a result. The Sheffield City Region Devolution Deal is over as a result. Doncaster and Rotherham no longer trust Julie Dore. The public consultation in 2017 saw just 6% of people support the new M18 Eastern Route compared to 94% who opposed. 


A 2017 Mott McDonald Report tor Rotherham and Doncaster Council saw less GVA and nearly 1,000 fewer jobs created than the previous Meadowhall plan which had the support of every South Yorkshire Council. Sheffield Chamber and Sheffield Council has led down the city and the region. The M18 Eastern Route was previously rejected by HS2 Ltd in 2011 when it was called East of Rotherham. 




Politicians in Yorkshire who have backed HS2 are now facing the possibility that the mega project will run out of money, especially when communities succeed in gaining the £4 billion of tunnel mitigation which has been withheld from Yorkshire which has been given to London and Buckinghamshire who lobbied for an extra 20 miles of tunnel to protect countryside, villages and City. HS2 Community groups last week handed the Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood a letter alleging that Chris Grayling Transport Secretary had been misled by HS2 over the number of residential properties in South and West Yorkshire within 100 metres of the route. While HS2 used a out of date and inaccurate postcode estimating system using 2014 data, residents used HS2's own maps to measure and count every individual property. Instead of the claimed 40% fewer properties on the new route, accurate and verified property counts from HS2 own maps showed a 53% increase in the residential properties affected by HS2 within 100 metres.





 Add the new build properties at Mexborough, Crofton and Newton, and the property count is nearly double. Campaigners also point to dirty tricks by HS2 where they pretended that only 16 properties on the Mexborough Shimmer Estate would be demolished while compulsory purchasing every property and falsely claiming fewer demolitions on the new route. Worse still the route so far to the East makes impossible the Northern Powerhouse Rail target of 30 minute journey time between Sheffield and Manchester, and un-guaranteed any HS2 link between Sheffield and Leeds. 
The only Jobs that come to South Yorkshire are those to development areas such as the Advanced Manufacturing Centre which were unblighted when the Meadowhall route was scrapped. Already the rows in South Yorkshire over Devolution, high-handed policy making and HS2 have seen Sheffield out of the running for Channel Four. Richard Wright is wrong that HS2 won't damage Sheffield, it already has

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