Coming through: the estate homes facing demolition for HS2

Tracy Stone moved into her newly built house on July 1 last year. A few days later she was told it might be demolished to make way for the High Speed 2 rail line.

“We feel we were cheated,” she says, recalling how she and her neighbours woke up to find letters from the company behind the project announcing the news.

On Monday, the government confirmed the route for the second phase of HS2, including the branch from the West Midlands to Leeds, which involves slicing through the Shimmer housing estate where Ms Stone lives in Mexborough, South Yorkshire.

Mexborough, a former mining town, was untouched by the original proposed route for the high-speed line outlined by HS2 Ltd, the taxpayer-owned company supervising the project.

But Sheffield lobbied for a link to HS2, and HS2 Ltd is now proposing to move the line further east, and run it through Mexborough.

This has all left the Shimmer estate “in limbo”, according to Ms Stone and other residents.

Strata, a local developer, started building the estate in July 2011, and it is meant to consist of 220 homes.

Of these, 16 will have to be demolished in the mid-2020s to make way for an HS2 viaduct passing through part of Mexborough. All the other homes on the estate are expected be affected by property blight stemming from the line.

Tall brick townhouses are spread along a single road branching off to culs-de-sac, but the estate is unfinished. Some 130 homes have been sold, with the rest rented out, empty or unbuilt.

“Who builds new houses just to knock them down? It is disgraceful,” says Ben Lovell, an electrician.

He bought his four-bedroom home three years ago and says HS2 Ltd has failed to keep them informed of developments.

The government said on Monday it would ensure homeowners on the Shimmer estate “can secure a comparable local home”.

They have already been offered £30,000 by the government, or the opportunity to sell their house for 10 per cent above the July 2016 market price. Every homeowner will be entitled to some form of compensation.

Stuart Spence was among the first buyers on the estate in 2011, paying £90,000 for a two-bedroom house.

But last year he and his partner Jodie Jenkins had a baby. “We wanted to move anyway but there’s no one we can sell to except the government,” he says.

Ed Miliband, the local MP and former Labour party leader, says the HS2 route is “wrong and perverse” and that locals oppose it by a factor of 15 to 1.

An HS2 Ltd spokesman said owners of the 16 homes on the Shimmer estate that are expected to be demolished had been informed on Monday.

Ms Stone, a postwoman who lives with her two adult children, says she will need more compensation than that so far offered for her home.

“I won’t move unless I get a good offer,” she adds. “I would chain myself to the kitchen sink. Let’s see what they would do about that.”