Recommendation 41

We pressed the Department to ensure that wherever possible, properties should be offered back to the persons from whom they were purchased, and that requests from people who would like to move back into their former homes be handled sympathetically, given that it can take years for cases to be considered through the Crichel Down rules. We raised the case of properties where decisions were still waiting to be made from earlier changes to the HS2 route, such as around Sheffield which was cancelled in 2021 as part of the Department’s Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands.71