Join the Save Euston Trees from HS2 meeting

Attend the Covid secure community meeting convened by Camden Civic Society, and sign the petition: Save Euston Trees from High Speed 2 (HS2) 6-8pm, on Thursday, December 17 at St Pancras Church Euston Road NW1 2BA - Facebook and please sign the petition.

At the HS2 quarterly “engagement” meeting Euston Community Representatives Group (ECRG) on December 1, community concerns were brushed aside. Big national infrastructure is built at a cost, and we are paying it for no benefit. HS2 has stopped even pretending to engage and mollify us.

For example: they would not listen to the problems with the Tree Panel. And when we said the community doesn’t want noisy works over Christmas again, they just said: “But we have planned piledriving in the cutting December 24-27 for a long time.”

When we said HS2 can’t carry out noisy works before the promised noise insulation and ventilation are installed, they say they don’t exceed the maximums the law allows – and so the residents in Langdale, Cartmel and Coniston have been suffering demolition without mitigation. Children from 24 families at Netley Primary live in those blocks, so we know the distress inflicted on them by HS2.

Dorothea Hackman sends out an invitation to join the Save Euston Trees from HS2 meeting (Image: Dorothea Hackman)

The HS2 Tree Panel was meant to safeguard our community from the unnecessary felling of mature trees, but since the summer it has given contractors permission to fell for convenience and utilities, even without surveys.

We need our mature trees for when HS2 is gone and our children get back our streets and green spaces.

The meeting, backed by the petition will consider the following demands:

1. Provide a map of the proposed sites of replacement trees with safeguarding.
2. Leave the four young Harrington Street trees in place to take their chance of root damage.
3. Preserve the two biggest trees in the middle of Euston Square Gardens East on traffic islands, and leave the big trees in the northwest corner to take their chance of surviving the build up of ground level around their trunks.
4. In Adelaide Road Woodland, restrict felling and leave the 50 trees in place under the lorry access platform, even if they must be pruned. Also leave the fifty trees in place by the disused track. HS2 do not have a bat licence for Adelaide Road – they must carry out current environmental surveys. Plan restoration with local groups including Camden Railway Heritage Trust and Camden Council.

Meanwhile Camden has yet to bring pressure on the North London Waste Authority to modify the plans for the next Edmonton Incinerator, which is over capacity and will discourage recycling. At least the Committee on Climate Change Report has specified that plants not yet built should only go ahead where there is CO2 infrastructure, and be built carbon capture and storage (CCS) ready. It is now five years since the Paris agreement and we are not yet limiting our carbon emissions to maintain and reduce global warming. We need positive action now from local as well as national government.