A number of different organisations are producing advice on answering the HS2 Consultation.
The Chiltern Countryside Group have issued a document with guidelines: the following are taken from this (but they do have more to say, so please read their website .)
Read the HS2 Consultation Document – High Speed Rail: Investing in Britain’s Future, February 2011 & the Economic Case for HS2 – The Y Network and London-West Midlands published by the DfT. Weblink: http://highspeedrail.dft.gov.uk A summary of the main points is available on: http://highspeedrail.dft.gov.uk/high-speed-rail. Copies of all the Consultation documents (see DfT Library) can be ordered free of charge from the DfT website. Please take time to read these documents carefully and to consider whether you have been given all the facts you need to inform your own personal response.
• CCG is advised that you may make more than one response to the Consultation, eg, you may wish to contribute additional information or are unaware of relevant facts at the time of your initial submission. All the evidence submitted under your name will be counted as one response, regardless of whether it is submitted at one time, or in stages.
• It is essential to make YOUR RESPONSE PERSONAL & in your own words. Copies of identical responses won’t have the impact of those individually crafted, although your points may be the same.
• CCG recommends that you consider our response suggestions as an illustration & start point for your own research and take more time to prepare before submitting by 29 JULY 2011.
• To help make this a truly nationwide Public Consultation in line with Government wishes, do please share this information and your own thoughts and concerns as widely as possible. Family and friends who live away from the HS2 routes will all be impacted at least through their taxes and the DfT will be examining the Consultation responses geographically, so it is extremely important that their voice is heard too. CCG is always happy to answer any queries or offer further information, so do send them our way if they need help or would like to know more about us and our aims.
WHILE THE CONSULTATIONS and debates over HS2 continue, KENILWORTH, the scene of the well supported gathering last week, needs to keep pressing for a new STATION and an extension to the DOUBLE TRACK section of line between LEAMINGTON SPA and COVENTRY.
CROSS COUNTRY train services use this route each way throughout the day, linking the North East and North West with the Thames Valley and the South, via Birmingham, Banbury and Oxford (There’s more to Coventry services than just Virgin” Pendolino” and London Midland locals.
WITH AN INCREASED CAPACITY and the single track bottleneck removed, trains would be less subject to delay.
This kind of improvement is not an alternative to HS2., but these kinds of improve ments need to be made while we continue to assess the capacity needs as they develop and maybe modify the plans for the “big project” in the light of that developing situation.