12:03pm Monday 22nd March 2010
By Oliver Evans
HOUSE sales have fallen through after controversial plans were announced to run a new high speed train line through the Buckinghamshire countryside, a councillor has said.
Councillor Martin Tett said people had called him ‘in tears’ because the plan – announced on March 10 – had made their sale fall through.
And he said he has never seen such a strong public reaction to an issue than the proposed route, to run under the Chalfonts and Amersham and overground by Great Missenden.
He said: “From the day this was announced there are people ringing up saying their purchasers have pulled out of the purchase of their houses.”
This included one deal which collapsed on the day the route was announced, he said.
Cllr Tett, cabinet member for strategic planning for Buckinghamshire County Council, said: “I have never seen such a massive explosion of concern and apprehension across Buckinghamshire.”
Some still though the plan – for 250mph trains to the Midlands and north – was a ‘small Railway Children type’ scheme.
Yet he said: “This is not – this is a rail motorway.”
Branding the plan ‘catastrophic’ he said: “We have to fight this proposal for all our residents.”
And he said he wanted to give ‘particular credit to the press who have done a great job in publicising this’. The Bucks Free Press last week launched a campaign opposing the plan.
Councillor Mike Colston said the county was ‘famous’ for the protected Chilterns Area of Outstand Natural Beauty, which the line would cut through.
This is one of two within 70 miles of London, he said. “They act as the living lungs for London so people can get away from the stress of urban living.”
The overground section would be a ’25 mile swathe of destruction through some of the finest countryside in the South East of England’.
He said he hoped the Government would find a colony of rare animals such as crested newts so the plan could not go ahead.
Councillor Marion Clayton said the impact would be ‘unbelievable, horrendous’ while Councillor Bill Chapple said: “It is pie in the sky but is absolute devastation on the ground.”
And she said she was ‘appalled’ that there would be no public inquiry into whether it should go ahead as it would be presented as a bill in Parliament.
A public consultation will take place later this year.
Councillor Valerie Letheren, responsible for transportation, said: “The blight is going to be huge.”
She said council chiefs met transport minister Lord Adonis the day before the route was announced.
Cllr Letheren said: “We told them then if they went through the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Buckinghamshire, the reaction they would get.
“I don’t think they would have been disappointed. Ever since that was published there has been tremendous alarm from our residents.”
The Government is consulting on compensation for people who will experience ‘exceptional hardship’ as a result of the line, which would be open by 2026.
A debate on the impact of the plan on the county will be held in Parliament this week.
Click the link below for our stories on the plans.
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