Farmers and growers are being urged to tell Government exactly how they will be affected by the HS2 rail link as the deadline for petitioning the Bill approaches.

NFU has been supporting its members through its Legal Assistance Scheme in the preparation of their petitions against the HS2 Hybrid Bill, which need to be deposited in person by Friday May 23. The union has not categorically opposed the high speed rail line that will link London and Birmingham, with a planned extension to Manchester and Leeds to follow, but has campaigned on some peripheral issues.   

NFU rural surveyor Louise Staples, who has represented NFU members throughout the process, said, "By petitioning the Bill, farmers will have the formal right for their views to be heard within Parliament by the HS2 select committee, which was set up in April this year.

"The select committee will consider all petitions and hear all individual circumstances as they do have the power to make changes to the Bill. This is why petitioning is extremely important. There is no substitute for the select committee hearing directly from individual farmers and growers about the impact HS2 will have on their farm businesses. It will create a stronger case for all farmers and growers and help to achieve better compensation and mitigation."

The NFU will also be depositing a petition on behalf of its farmer members who will be impacted by HS2, highlighting issues that affect rural businesses and communities. The union is primarily campaigning for greater payouts for affected landowners and arguing that offsets should be made elsewhere than on prime agricultural land, having expressed concern over "the amount of productive land that is to be taken out of primary agricultural production". 

Biodiversity offsetting

Union president Meurig Raymond has said that biodiversity offsetting options should be made open to farmers. Though some landowners could stand to gain from biodiversity offsetting as part of the HS2 project, the practice remains hugely controversial.

Supporters of offsetting and the concept of 'ecosystem services' on which it relies argue that placing monetary values on natural processes or aspects of ecosystems is the only way to make developers appreciate their value. However, conservationists have warned that offsetting and the idea of ecosystem services – by their very nature – represent a failure to frame the argument successfully from conservationists' perspective and that the natural environment, which is not part of the financial system, will always be undervalued when placed in competition with a financial development. Critics warn that, in the best possible scenario, certain charismatic natural processes or habitats, or those that most obviously benefit humans, could be prioritised at the expense of more poorly understood but equally valuable ones under offsetting; whereas in the worst case, offsetting, as pursued by the coalition government, could amount to giving developers a license to trash the environment, "permit[ting] the commodification of nature" in a bid to speed up the planning process.

NFU has urged farmers to find out more about the potential impacts of HS2, by reviewing the union's priorities here or watching the video “HS2 to decimate Packington Moor Farm”.