Buy your house back, Rishi Sunak tells homeowners forced out by HS2

Rishi Sunak defended his decision to scrap phase two of HS2 on ITV's This Morning. Photo: Ken Mackay/ITV/Shutterstock

Rishi Sunak has invited people who were forced to sell their homes to make way for HS2 to buy them back after he closed the northern part of the scheme.

Prime Minister -The minister said families would have a «chance» to offer their old homes, but acknowledged they faced «an enormous amount of destruction.»

He made the remarks while defending his decision to scrap the second phase of the high-speed rail link , saying the amounts were no longer adding up.

Mr Sunak said redirecting cash to hundreds of local transport projects across the country would create more jobs and boost the economy.

Asked about his message to those who have sold their homes to make way for HS2, he told ITV: «I know people have faced huge disruption.

» Some people who have sold will have a chance to buy it back. Now all this will begin to happen, these processes, and there will be many people who will be able to do this.

«I need to look to the future, and the worst thing I could do is say, 'I can make a decision that I know is right for the future, but I'm not going to do it because people will be upset or because that we were already starting on the wrong path.»

«I didn't want to just double down on something that I thought was wrong.»

Construction of the Amersham main building and ventilation shaft for the HS2 Chiltern Tunnel section. Photo: TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS

He made the announcement after it emerged that HS2 was still buying up people's homes, to the point where Mr Sunak announced he was abandoning the northern site.

The company behind the railway line used compulsory purchase order to buy a house worth more than £1.5 million less than 24 hours before the Prime Minister's speech.

Almost 1,000 properties along the proposed route from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds have already been bought.

Among them was a mansion sold by comedian John Bishop for £6.8 million in 2019.

'Destroyed a community'

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, has already confirmed that those Those forced to sell their homes will not receive additional compensation.

This comes after farmers accused the government of “raping the countryside” by buying farmland before “moving out of it.”< /p>

John Barnes, who had to give up his Staffordshire farm to make way for the proposed line, said HS2 had «destroyed the community» in his area.