Man forced to sell home for HS2 has 'lost everything'

Roly Bardsley, 59, said he was forced to sell his family home in Cheshire

A man who says he was forced to sell his house by HS2 said the failed project has "destroyed his life".

Roly Bardsley learned his home in Stanthorne, Cheshire, was affected by the planned route when he received a letter containing a map of the line.

After being denied a compulsory purchase order, the 59-year-old said he had "lost everything".

"I tried to sell it and estate agents laughed at me. It was blighted forever," he said.

The BBC has contacted the Department of Transport for comment.

The Prime Minster Rishi Sunak has announced at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester that HS2 will be scrapped. HS2 was a proposed high-speed rail link between London and the north of England.

Mr Sunak told the conference that £36bn allocated to it would be reinvested into other northern rail and road schemes.

Mr Bardsley said the route would have come within 40 yards (37m) of his house and that an additional bypass would have left the place on "an island with no means of access".

"It was unbelievable," he said.

"They refused to compulsorily purchase it because it didn't knock the house down.

"I would have had trains travelling at 240 miles an hour every twelve minutes, 40 yards from my window."

At the same time Mr Bardsley's business was in financial difficulty and went into administration.

He believes if it were not for the HS2 plan he would have been able to borrow against his home and save his business.

Instead, he said he was forced to sell the property and his business folded.

"I was now in financial distress caused by them," he said.

"I lost my business. I lost my livelihood. And I lost my home.

"It is profoundly the worst thing that's ever happened to me and my family ever."

'Destroyed lives'

He said life had been "going well" before the letter dropped through the door. Now he finds it too upsetting to drive past the property - the place where his children grew up - because there are "too many memories".

"We had everything there," he said. "I think we could have lived there forever."

Mr Bardsley said he supported the levelling up of the North and said the plan to put Leeds and Manchester and London all within an hour of each other was "fantastic".

"Development happens," he said, "and I was expecting clean answers, a solution and to move on.

"To be at war for that amount of time, it cost everything I had. I spent everything we had in the bank.

"Now that HS2 is not going to happen, it has destroyed lives.

"It's been a decade of hell. I never thought that something could define my life as much as this. [We've lost] our home, my livelihood, my business, which had 200 employees. [Some of them had] worked for me for 40 years."