The villagers up in arms over HS2’s £100m bat shed

November 11

It is a grey, misty morning in Twyford, Buckinghamshire, and the mood is as downcast as the weather. The village’s residents have endured more than a decade of disruption and delays due to the High Speed 2 project. A stretch of the railway is planned to run just north of the village, which has a population of about 550. They are used to tense community meetings and news of spiralling costs. However, last week brought a new low: news that the building of a giant “shed” nearby to protect rare bats from HS2 trains will cost taxpayers £100 million.

“I think we’ve all gone batty,” says Joan Sinclair, 69, who runs the village pub. “Spending £100 million on a bat house… It’s a bats— bat house.”

“It’s just a waste of money – but anything to do with HS2 is,” she mutters from behind the bar. She suggests that, at this point, the bats are getting a better deal than the residents themselves, some of whom will receive compensation from HS2 if the line reduces the value of their homes.

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An artist’s impression of the half-mile-long bat shed – HS2

The creature in question is the Bechstein’s bat, one of the UK’s rarest bat species, which thrives in a local patch of mature woodland that the HS2 route will bisect.

Last week, Sir Jon Thompson, who took over as HS2 Ltd chairman last year, revealed that in order to protect the bat colony, the government-owned firm is building a just over half-mile-long “bat shed” along a stretch of the route in Sheephouse Wood, at the eye-watering cost of £100 million. Thompson, who was initially parachuted into the troubled project after leading HMRC, said the “bat mitigation project” was just one of 8,276 consents HS2 needed to secure to construct the first phase of the railway between London and Birmingham.

The 33ft-high structure – which looks more like an airport terminal than a bat box from the artist’s impression – is designed to protect the bats from the 225mph trains. “All bats are legally protected in the UK and the structure will allow bats to cross the line without being harmed by passing trains,” according to the HS2 website.

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Villager Joan Sinclair has expressed dismay at the new project – John Lawrence

“The design is based around a series of arches. Although not technically classed as a tunnel, this structure has been carefully chosen as being the most effective solution to match our design considerations,” it continues. “The design is durable and requires little maintenance, reducing overall costs and materials.” However, according to Thompson himself, the project, previously set to cost £40 million, is his “favourite example” of “why we can’t build infrastructure in this country”.

Rae Sloan, also from Twyford, has been involved in a local campaign against HS2 from the start. “Every meeting it was bats, bats, bats,” she says. “They’ve been working on it solidly for more than a year now… The first thing they suggested was a couple of bridges, to which my facetious comment was, ‘Are you going to signpost it as well, so they can find where these bridges are?’”

However, she concedes, “The environmental impact [of HS2] is absolutely horrendous, and my opinion is… [that] the whole thing is a waste of money, so we might as well protect what we can.”

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Villager Rae Sloan thinks the HS2 project is a waste of money – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

Even those in favour of environmental protections strongly criticise the overspending that has dogged the project as a whole, which eventually led to it being dramatically scaled back by the Conservatives. Roger Landells, 79, the chairman of Twyford parish council, has been told that the enormous structure is “world beating” and the “first of its kind”. He will be 400 yards from the HS2 line when it is completed. “The figure of £100 million is about the aggregate value of all the houses in Twyford,” he says.

“There are very few people [here] who have a good word to say about HS2, if for no other reason than that it is highly destructive of the land, it’s stopping a lot of people from using the countryside because footpaths are closed, and everything takes at least 50 per cent longer than they say it is going to.

“To an extent, we feel they are making it up as they go along. The plans change considerably. At the moment, it’s going to be a railway to nowhere,” he adds.

Thompson confessed to an industry conference that there is “no evidence” the bats are at risk from the trains. The bat is “generally pretty available in most of northern Europe, western Europe,” he added. “But nevertheless, under the Wildlife Act 1981, it’s deemed to be a protected species in the UK, this bat, even though there’s lots of them.”

He suggested that Buckinghamshire County Council and Natural England disagreed with HS2 about measures to protect bats living on the planned route of the line, resulting in “hundreds of thousands of pounds” being spent on lawyers and consultants.

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Roger Landells, 79, the chairman of Twyford parish council, will live 400 yards from the HS2 line when it is completed – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

However, Natural England said these claims were inaccurate. “Natural England has not required HS2 Ltd to build the reported structure, or any other structure, nor advised on the design or costs,” it said in a statement.

Daniel Whitby is an ecologist who specialises in the research and conservation of bats, and argues that the Bechstein is getting a bad press. It is one of the “much rarer bats in Europe and in the UK,” he says, and is rightfully in need of protection. However, “I can’t see how any structure could cost that much,” he says. “This is a half-mile-long tunnel. So that’s, what, £100,000 a yard?”

Those who live in its path have just about had enough. “It’s a lot of money,” is the mild assessment from Shirley Whittemore, who lives in a nearby village. Her husband, Jim, puts it less delicately. “It’s disgusting,” he says. “Of all the billions of pounds we need elsewhere… and not one party has the guts to stand up and cancel it.”

The construction of HS2 has caused a litany of issues in the village, according to its residents, and to lavish £100 million on a glorified bat box is, perhaps, the final straw. “The Government keeps saying there’s a black hole,” says Sinclair. “[And] the people who live here get nothing. When you look at the state of everything – the roads for a start. The roads around here are atrocious.

“People stopped buying houses in the villages when HS2 was first mentioned, because they didn’t know what it was going to be,” she continues. “The house prices went stagnant, and even now it takes a long time to sell.”

The bats may, indeed, have a better deal.

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