Wendover’s Mined Tunnel
How you can help
The best solution to get HS2 past Wendover is a tunnel. Wendover Parish Council and other groups have energetically championed a Mined Tunnel solution. Our experts tell us it is Cheaper, Quicker, Simpler, it reduces the damage to our AONB and it vastly reduces the number of HGVs on our roads.
In December 2017 Paul Maynard, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the DfT, wrote to David Lidington MP with further justification for ignoring Wendover’s Mined Tunnel proposal. The fact that our proposal is Cheaper, Quicker, Simpler than HS2 Ltd’s scheme hasn’t sparked any interest in the DfT. The fact that our proposal is fully costed and compliant, which is more than HS2 Ltd can say, doesn’t tickle their fancy either.
The telling fact is that all of the reasons that Paul Maynard put forward on behalf of the DfT were just unsubstantiated nonsense. Refuting them was like shooting fish in a barrel. A typical example is the cost of designing the 4.2km mined tunnel that Wendover wants. DfT cost £18 million. The real world cost £800,000.
HS2 Ltd are playing fast and loose with the facts about this project. The Wendover Parish Council (PC) Team cost every aspect of their Mined Tunnel using the rail industries accepted Rail Standard Method of Measurement. We show our working out at every stage. HS2 Ltd don’t appear to have any idea of the real cost of the project that they pushed through Parliament. We feel that they are trying to “run the clock down” so that they can say that it’s too late to incorporate our “good idea”.
When the HS2 bill passed through the House of Lords, Lord Ahmad for the government conceded that the designers and builders of HS2 would consider “good ideas”. Wendover put forward just such a good idea. A good idea that would be Cheaper, Quicker, Simpler and that would save the national asset that is the AONB and reduce the intrusion of HS2 on our community.
The Wendover PC team has precisely rebutted all of the points raised in this latest letter and David Lidington MP has undertaken to deliver this rebuttal to ministers.
Nusrat Ghani MP is the new minister responsible for HS2; Paul Maynard MP has moved on.
If you personally would like to help us, why not send a very polite email to Nusrat Ghani MP:nusrat.ghani.mp@parliament.ukpointing out that Wendover has a Cheaper, Quicker, Simpler and less environmentally damaging solution to taking HS2 past our community and asking why this “good idea” is being ignored.
Tom Walsh, Chair of the Wendover Parish CouncilHS2 Working Group