WPC HS2 - UPDATE

Wendover Parish Council HS2 update

The new WPC remains committed to seeking the best mitigation against HS2 and continues lobbying for what is best for Wendover.

Planning Permissions - Schedule 17

We continue to work with Buckinghamshire Council officers to push back at the inadequate, and in our view the non-compliant, Schedule 17 submission for the viaduct at Wendover Dean. It remains a surprise to us that a project the size of HS2 delivers information to planners of a lower quality than we or a local builder would need to produce for a small local project. The WPC working group will also continue to work with our County Councillors on the compliance and enforcement issues raised by the HS2 works.

Isn’t it time for a truly independent review of HS2?

We are writing to Andrew Stephenson to push for a Peer Review of the HS2 project and we need your help.

A Peer Review, as was evidenced on the Thames Tideway project, will bring clarity, redefine purpose and add value to big projects. It is also a useful method of deflecting egg from faces and of breaking down institutional stubbornness. If you think that HS2 should be Peer Reviewed just contact the minister. email: andrew.stephenson@dft.gov.uk.

Wendover continues to make friends in high places

Continuing on from our ongoing work with Lord Berkeley we are now also engaging with Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted. The Baroness, a Liberal Democrat peer, is helping us to question the Government on HS2 and represents a welcome additional channel to continue that work.

Why delays in Wendover?

To the north of us some vast viaducts are already completed and to the south the tunnel boring machine is grinding away at the Chiltern chalk. The fact that major construction isn’t starting in Wendover might indicate that, as we have said all along, HS2 has complicated itself to a standstill near to us. Watch this space.

Tom Walsh, Chairman of the WPC HS2 Working Group