A letter drops through my front door in suburban south west London. “Your property or business is located within 200 metres of land that may be needed in the future to build Crossrail 2 underground rail line.”
The route is “currently protected by Safeguarding Directions made some years ago”. Strip out the gobbledegook, and much of my job involves deciphering such corporate weasel-speak, and this means it is possible my house, and the land it occupies, may be needed in the building of this project, which will run north-south across the capital from Hackney through to Wimbledon.
As a consequence, any development on that land will have to be cleared with the authorities. Should I choose to sell my house, any buyer will have to be informed of this fact. This is called planning blight. Houses all over the country are rendered unsaleable because someone might want to build something on them some time.
Except that, if you look a little closer, the threat is almost non-existent. My house is not on the route of Crossrail 2, which as it is planned will end at the nearest overground rail station, a good 15 minutes walk away. Not 200 metres.
My house may, or may not, be on the route of a proposed extension to Crossrail 2, I learn from the project’s spectacularly unhelpful website. They have yet to agree whether to build the basic route. This will need the private sector to put up half the money. It will need whatever government is in power to find the rest, by the estimated start of building work in 2017.
The next administration is going to be even more strapped for cash than the current one. I can find no mention of how much the project is going to cost, but Crossrail 1, which is going ahead, needed £15 billion. It looks unlikely that a future government will sanction another large infrastructure project while shutting schools and hospitals and slashing the welfare bill.
Even if it does, that extension that would affect me is even further into the future – the basic line will not open until 2030. If it ever does.
Meanwhile, any attempt to sell my house will require that caveat to be published to nervous buyers.
Still, Boris Johnson wants Crossrail 2. The man who wanted a huge island built in the Thames Estuary to serve as London’s main airport, a messianic project that had nil chance of success and has now been canned. (I met Boris once. Engaging character. Not someone you would want running the country.)
I reckon the chances of Crossrail 2 and its extended bastard brother affecting my property are infinitessimal. Still, no reason not to worry the punters. Send a letter anyway.
Bloody bureaucrats.
Tom Paines Bones 