Craig Douglas and his wife Karen before the Bree Louise was demolished

THE landlord of a thriving pub, seized and demolished to make way for HS2 platforms that will never be built, has revealed he is still waiting for compensation – more than five years after being forced out.

Craig Douglas was told the Bree Louise pub  in Euston Street stood in the way of the High Speed 2 railworks and had no choice but to let it be flattened.

With the project in tatters after prime minister Rishi Sunak’s cuts to the hopelessly over-budget scheme, it has now emerged that it did not need to be bulldozed after all.

Mr Douglas told the New Journal: “It’s sickening. They told us they needed the pub for subterranean work for a new cornerstone for the platforms they were going to build. They won’t need the area now that the pub was on whatsoever.”

The government has poured salt into the family’s wound by failing to pay out a penny in promised compensation under a compulsory purchase order. Without the money, Mr Douglas said they were forced to leave the area they had called home for years and move out of the capital.

The Bree Louise’s final days – on film in 2018!

The destruction of the pub – previously named pub of the year by Camra – is one of the best illustrations of how HS2 has scarred Camden forever. Mr Douglas had named the pub after his daughter who had passed away as a baby.

As the New Journal reported last week, the area around Euston is now set to be the scene for a gold rush for developers looking to get their hands on the giant brownfield site where businesses and homes have been demolished.

Mr Sunak announced last week that he was axing the Manchester arm of the proposed route. He did say work would continue at Euston but the HS2 station would be significantly reduced in scope, halving the number of platforms originally intended down from 12 to six among other cost-cutting measures.

We revealed details of how the smaller footprint for the station would increase the space available for an investment corporation to come in and build 10,000 homes for the “new generation of homeowners”.

The government will raise billions from the site to fund projects across the country, more likely opening the doors to those who want to build expensive luxury homes than council housing.

Mr Douglas said: “It’s sickening, absolutely sickening. We have been through the mill. We have moved out of London because we couldn’t afford to live there anymore. We are still battling to get our compensation – after five and a half years. It’s unbelievable. They were never going to do their bit for the northern powerhouses.

“If they were, they would have started it up there [in Manchester and Leeds], rather than down in Euston. I still question whether HS2 will end up coming to Euston.”

The demolished pub [Simon Lamrock]

Mr Douglas and his wife Karen had taken over the pub when it was known as the Jolly Gardeners but named after their daughter, Bree, who had died 12 weeks after birth. They ran it for 15 years. Asked whether he would ever consider reopening in Camden, Mr Douglas said: “I’m 64 next birthday, you know. You have got to ask yourself, do you want to start again at this age?”

He said the whole HS2 project had taken a serious toll on his health and family. “They are just fighting and fighting against our claim,” Mr Douglas said. “They brought in forensic accountants and they asked me endless questions about how much we were making. We were a CAMRA pub of the year!”

He said he had been offered £1.153m compensation for losses due to HS2 when his claim had been closer to £4.2m.

The matter will be decided eventually at tribunal. Meanwhile, experts have told the New Journal this week that any move to sell off land grabbed under CPOs for HS2 to private developers would be challenged in the courts.

Michael Byng, a chartered quality surveyor who worked on the recent Oakervee review of the cost of HS2, launched when Boris Johnson became PM, said: “In a nutshell, the CPO process has been abused and misused by HS2 and DfT and will be challenged in the courts if necessary.”

In Camden, residents have already suffered six years of hell with 24-hour demolition works metres from council estate doorsteps and thousands of lorries charging through neighbourhood streets. They have seen the closure of parks, axing of trees, the demolition of NHS buildings and a secondary school, more than 200 homes, and the exhumation of thousands of graves from the bulldozed St James’s Garden.

All the way through the chaos, MPs from all sides have routinely backed the project in the House of Commons until the PM’s announcement last week. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his party could not simply resurrect the Manchester arm of the project at conference this week.

Rishi Sunak announced the raid on Euston at last week’s Conservative Party conference

Mr Sunak announced last week plans to hand over control of the Euston HS2 programme to a new Development Corporation – a private-public partnership similar to that which rebuilt King’s Cross when the Eurostar railway was built. When asked for a comment on Tuesday, HS2 Ltd said it had received no official instructions from the DfT since Mr Sunak’s announcement last Wednesday.

Apart from the reduction in platforms, the new plan involves scrapping a link between the HS2 station and Euston and Euston Square tube stations. This underground link has been the cause of months of utility diversion works in Hampstead Road, Eversholt Street and Euston Road that have caused traffic misery for residents.

Once again, Lord Andrew Adonis – the unelected Labour peer and architect of the HS2 project back in 2009 – did not respond to a request for comment from the New Journal.

The developer Lendlease has the first right of refusal on the land around Euston station under terms of a “master development agreement” struck behind closed doors in 2018. A spokesperson for the company said the agreement was still in place, adding: “At the heart of our vision is an aspiration for Euston to become an inclusive, globally connected community. We look forward to working collaboratively with partners to deliver this and help unlock the full potential of the area for everyone who lives or works there.”

The Department for Transport did not respond to a requests for comment on Mr Douglas’s concerns, but a spokesman said: “It is simply wrong to talk down the scale and benefits of this regeneration.”

* CLIMATE activists are calling for a halt to HS2 “land grabs” up and down the line that have seen parks, nature reserves and private properties seized in and around Euston for the HS2 railway.

One of the protesters who spent a month living in a network of tunnels between Euston Square Gardens – in an astonishing protest against mature trees being felled in 2021 – said the bulldozed land around Camden should be reclaimed for the public instead of being sold off to developers.

Dr Larch Maxey said: “These gardens were intended for the people, but now they’re fenced off and buried under concrete. We demand the return of this land, alongside the cancellation of Phase 1 of HS2, to prevent further destruction and unnecessary expenses.”

Dan “Swampy” Hooper added: “HS2 was never an environmentally friendly project. It fell far short of being carbon-neutral and inflicted substantial biodiversity loss.”