Removal of the safeguarding for the cancelled rail development paves the way for the Measham Waterside housing development to proceed which includes restoration of 1100 metres of the Ashby Canal. It will also simplify the Chesterfield Canal restoration at Staveley.
The Ashby Canal restoration at Measham has been blighted by HS2 since 2014. The original route cut through the middle of the planned housing estate, rendering it and the associated canal restoration unviable This was amended in 2016 and again in 2017, and a further review promised in 2018, but then finally abandoned in 2023.
The Chesterfield Canal could have been forced to build an extra lock and to deepen another planned lock to pass under the site of a former railway bridge to be reinstated as access to an HS2 depot, even though that had been subsequently abandoned.
Phase 2b East (East Midlands to Leeds) was abandoned in 2021 and HS2 East (Kingsbury to East Midlands Parkway) cancelled in 2023, with all the safeguarding due to be removed by Summer 2024.
IWA had written to the Rail Minister in February this year about the unnecessary delay and its effect on the two canal restoration projects, and welcomes this belated announcement.
In a 6-Monthly Report to Parliament on 17 July, the Secretary of State for Transport said “I am today formally lifting the safeguarding directions for the former Phase 2b Eastern Leg (between the West Midlands and Leeds), removing the uncertainty that has affected many people along the former route.”
For the abandoned Phase 2a (Fradley to Crewe) the planning safeguarding was largely lifted in January 2024 although the land and property acquired on the route has not yet been sold and the Act of Parliament for its construction remains in place.
On the former Phase 2b West (Crewe to Manchester) route the safeguarding still remains pending future decisions on Northern Powerhouse Rail.
