Campaigners say delays to HS2 is “like fiddling while Rome burns”.
The Government has confirmed plans to re-phase the controversial high speed railing, which will cut through parts of Lichfield and surrounding villages.
It means some phases of the scheme will be pushed back.
Penny Gaines, chair of the Stop HS2 campaign group, said the latest about-turn demonstrated why the entire project should be scrapped.
“The latest Government statement is another blatant attempt to pretend everything is fine with HS2, just a bit of delay and cost pressure.
“Every single time the Government have tried to keep the budget down, they have either increased the cost or dropped parts of the project, or both. And the latest announcement continues this.
“With the so called re-phasing of the Birmingham to Crewe section, the delays and downgrading of other parts of the project, the government is spending tens of billions to have a railway with two Birmingham stations and one in the suburbs of London.
“Rather than adding more delays to supposedly save costs, the Government should cancel HS2 in its entirety, ensure that the people who have lost homes and businesses to HS2 are paid in full the compensation they are due, and the damage to the environment that has already been done is made good.
“Simply delaying it is like fiddling while Rome burns.”
Penny Gaines, Stop HS2
Lichfield’s MP has called for answers for those local communities who have been blighted by HS2 preparatory works.
Stop HS2 founder Joe Rukin said:
“The statement from Government about the latest cutbacks to HS2 marks a further comedic implosion of this disastrous project – it would be hilarious if it weren’t so predictably tragic.
“They have had 13 years and six attempts to get the design of Euston right, but now they say they will ‘take the time’ to get it right, completely ignoring what we have said from the start, that the station they want to build cannot possibly fit into the space they have got.
“HS2 has been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish, it is massively environmentally damaging, prohibitively expensive, unwanted, unloved and unneeded – it only exists because of hard lobbying from the construction industry who wanted to build the most expensive railway in world history and are directly responsible for many of the cost increases.
“HS2 is an absolute joke and this is only ever, as it always has, going to get worse and the project should be cancelled immediately.”
Joe Rukin, Stop HS2
“Wora a waste a money,wora a waste a money,ya don’t know what you’re doing,ya don’t know what you’re doing” Special thanks to old school football chants incorporated.
Environmental butchery,billions wasted on a plethora of issues throughout this Governments thirteen year “CLOWN SHOW”! What an absolute shower and disgrace most of you minister’s and mp’s have truly been.
This current rail project will be technically outdated and to a very large extent obsolete by the time of its unlikely full completion.We are however at the point of no return on the southern section, Maglev,clean and economical renewable options is the way forward;just look to the far East they are simply lightyears ahead.