We are residents of a suburban cull-de-sac, that abuts on what used to be the YMCA’s Hollies playing fields. This site has been abandoned for 20 years, and has now turned into a wonderful rewilding area. As far as we understand the ownership of the land sits somewhere in the Brittania hotels group.
Even though we are urban, the fields are full of birds and wildlife. Of course such a site has its problems as well: there is a derelict clubhouse, and a reasonable amount of knot weed, that is not controlled at all. It is also the only access to the river Mersey in walking distance for a large number of local residents, and was a life-line during the COVID epidemic for many–and is still very well used by many local residents.
What is the problem
HS2 has suddenly decided that they want to put an enormous vent shaft in the middle of these fields. Big enough to lift out 4 enormous tunnel boring machines. In order to do that they are willing to build a 500 meters’ long twin-lane access road, and completely ruin this, as they call it, “informal recreational resource”. The change was forced by incompetence by HS2, who thought that the initial design in the flood basin was a good idea (it was not). They then got fixated on a single solution, without doing due diligence: they didn’t even check that a local building had been sold to become a School–and they are now making it very hard for the School as well as residents.
The proposed build has moved from the flood basin to the flood plane, and HS2 expects to manage flood risk more easily. As far as they have released information, there has been no realistic consideration of alternatives. We feel that these enormous building works may be a way to get rid of some waste material, by using them for building a road.
This project will blight all our lives for at least 5 years in the day time (and 4 years in the night time). It will makes it very hard to reach the Mersey, and it is yet unclear whether the Transpennine Way will be accessible at all.
