Firms in Warwickshire and Coleshill fear for future with no HS2 compensation

At Hilltop Farm shop and cafe in Hunningham, near Leamington Spa, the closure of the main road, the Fosse Way, has seen the business losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Manager Charlotte Carter said they have been closed due to the HS2 works more than 20 times over the last six years.

“Every time they close the road the business is massively affected due to loss of sales,” she said. “We lose passing trade and then our regular customers can’t always get to us without a big detour and then they just don’t come.”

She added that many of the road closures happened during school holidays at key trading periods.

“At Christmas, when it was a key trading weekend for Christmas trees, the road was shut, so we missed out on a lot of trade, and Christmas trees are a massive part of our revenue,” Carter said.

She added she found it frustrating that the project’s budget continued to see huge increases and yet HS2 refused to compensate small businesses.

“I don’t understand how the money can be ploughed into the project, it doesn’t seem any care is given to how much money they keep spending but when it comes to looking after small businesses, they’re just not interested,” she said.

She said they needed compensation now, not in 10 years time, because the farm might not be there in 10 years time.

An HS2 Ltd spokesperson said they listened to the firm’s concerns and

“We adjusted the timing of our planned works – to better align to their trading hours – including removing weekend closures,” they added.