‘Not one of our eight councillors from the wards most affected by HS2 could be bothered to attend’

• THE 38th meeting of HS2’s Euston Community Representatives Group, ECRG, revealed a dire state of affairs.

The core elements were two insulting and poor presentations, one by Camden’s head of regeneration and the other by the department for transport’s director for Euston.

There was a great deal of expertise and sage advice in the room but none of it from Camden councillors. That came from the battle-hardened, long-suffering, residents who are exasperated at having not been listened to for a decade.

Not one of our eight councillors from the wards most affected by HS2 could be bothered to attend.

The consequence of this indifference is that officers and their counterparts in Lendlease, HS2 Ltd, Mace, SCS and consultancies, steam ahead “at pace” as if there was no so-called “two-year pause” or the prime minister having announced five months ago that HS2 at Euston would only be six platforms and the public purse wouldn’t be funding the £10billion or so for the station and tunnelling through to Old Oak Common.

Despite having been stripped of responsibility HS2 Ltd is still in charge!

The claim that only “no regrets works” are progressing is risible. Take a look at the hive of activity below Park Village East and in the throat.

Given that only a six-platform new station is approved, why is the community to be unnecessarily subjected to infrastructure for 11 platforms, with a massive new bridge building on Hampstead Road and grade separation of the tracks, all totally unnecessary?

And the lauded expensive new Euston pie-in-the-sky economic forecast report is just puffery, with unconcealed greed for profit, having been prepared by consulting every commercial interest but omitting to talk to the community such as represented ably by the ECRG.

This is what happens when our elected representatives aren’t looking. And it’s a mirror image of how MPs in the Commons were asleep at the wheel at every opportunity to challenge Boris Johnson’s HS2 train-set legacy.

PAUL BRAITHWAITE, NW5