HS2 Autumn & winter update

Over the coming months, you may see Laing O’Rourke and J. Murphy & Sons (LM) staff and subcontractors on HS2 sites near you, continuing with our early works for the railway. We want to give you a sense of what we will and won’t be doing in this period.
​Ancient woodland sites
As HS2 confirmed in this statement, LM will not be removing ancient trees in 2019 – instead, we will continue preparing our worksites and hold off on removing trees until at least 2020. For more information, please see HS2’s statement.
LM has been instructed to continue with essential preparatory works at all of our sites in Warwickshire, which includes some non-ancient vegetation clearance, fencing, and creating site accesses.
In the sites postponed until 2020, which include Broadwells Wood, Crackley/Birches Wood and South Cubbington Wood, we will still need to work among the trees to carry out measures to protect wildlife (such as bats). This will involve some localised removal of selected tree branches for essential mitigation works to meet legal requirements for protected species, ahead of continuing our work in early 2020. However, we will not remove branches from any ‘ancient’ or ‘veteran’ trees within an ancient woodland, so as not to affect the integrity of the ancient woodlands.
Other activities
We will be continuing with other clearance activities this Winter. This includes clearing shrubs, hedgerows and woodland in non-ancient sites, as well as habitat creation.
Our general clearance work in Warwickshire will begin in mid-October 2019 near Welsh Road, setting up a compound in that location. Our clearance teams will then progress north along the future route of HS2.
This work needs to continue in order to ensure that main construction work for HS2 can commence on time in future. It is also important to complete this work during this time of year, as it is outside of key periods in the ecological calendar such as bird nesting season – minimising our impact on local wildlife.
For more information about our work in your area, come along to one of HS2’s drop-in events at the following locations:
· Stoneleigh Village Hall – 2.00pm to 4.00pm on Tuesday 8 October
· Weston-Under-Wetherley Village Hall – 6.00pm to 8.00pm on Tuesday 8 October
· Balsall Common Library – 2.00pm to 4.00pm on Tuesday 15 October
· The Kenilworth Centre – 6.00pm to 8.00pm on Tuesday 15 October
· Ufton Village Hall – 6.00pm to 8.00pm on Thursday 31 October
If you have any questions about HS2 or our works, please contact our HS2 Helpdesk team on 08081 434 434 or email hs2enquiries@hs2.org.uk.