A man who sold his home to HS2 says he was left distraught after discovering it had been turned into a cannabis factory.
Alan Wilkinson bought the four-bedroom home in the hillside village of Whitmore Heath in Staffordshire with his wife, Gillian, in the late 1970s.
The couple added a swimming pool and new kitchen – but when proposals emerged for the now-axed HS2 line beneath the hamlet, they pushed forward with plans to move and downsize.
It triggered a battle to sell the home to HS2, a fight Gillian would not see the end of, as she died from pancreatic cancer two weeks before the scheduled move in 2019.
The detached property was not required to make way for the line, but the couple settled on a £1.2m deal with HS2, which purchased it under a “special circumstances” scheme.
But Mr Wilkinson was shocked when he discovered his old home, which had subsequently been rented out, was being used to grow cannabis plants.
“My old neighbour saw two Jehovah’s Witnesses walking out of my old drive and he told them ‘you won’t find anyone in there’,” the 85-year-old said.
“They replied ‘no, but there’s cannabis’. Turns out there was 184 cannabis plants growing inside. They could smell it.”
Soon after, Staffordshire Police raided the house and found the drugs growing in five rooms. A man from Merseyside pleaded guilty to the production of a class B drug in July.
The property, which Mr Wilkinson said was reroofed and had its swimming pool removed before being rented out, has now been left empty – one of hundreds of properties requiring security, costing HS2 £1.9m in 2023/24.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “I feel awful, truthfully, about what’s happened. I lived there for 30 years; it was a great chunk of my life, a beautiful house, and now it’s sitting empty, abandoned.
“I hear rumours it’s going to be knocked flat and rebuilt.”
The Wilkinsons’ home was one of 35 sold to HS2 under a number of schemes as the company planned twin tunnels beneath the hill-top village.
Some are now rented out, while a number sit empty, judged not to be suitable for the letting market.
The community’s strain over the situation was exacerbated by the then-Tory government’s decision in 2023 to scrap the section of line that would have run from Birmingham to Manchester.
Mr Wilkinson said: “HS2 destroyed our village. It was a fine community where people who had made it had gone to live. But the plans for the line tore it apart, more than a dozen people died while waiting to sell their homes.
“I can’t bear to go back, so many memories there with my wife, all gone.”
Mr Wilkinson, who also served as the chair of Whitmore Parish Council, was central to the community’s dispute with HS2 as locals sought deals to sell their homes.
With his wife’s condition worsening, he travelled to London to deliver a petition for HS2 at a high speed rail bill committee hearing in 2018.
Asked about the impact of the HS2 plans on his family’s health, Mr Wilkinson said: “Yes, of course it did [have an impact]. HS2 was the worst thing that could have happened to Whitmore Heath.”
It’s understood that homes purchased by HS2 in Whitmore Heath, and along the stretch of axed line to Manchester, remain under Department for Transport ownership despite the route being scrapped almost two years ago.
In total, HS2 spent £3.79bn purchasing properties for the overall line, including £633m on the now-scrapped sections of the route.
An HS2 spokesperson said the line would have run in a tunnel up to 30 metres beneath Whitmore Heath, and that no homeowner was compelled to sell their property for the railway to be built.
They continued: “We recognised Mr Wilkinson’s difficult situation and he accepted our offer in 2019 to buy his home through HS2’s Special Circumstances Scheme, under which we covered moving costs, paid stamp duty and legal fees.
“We utterly condemn the illegal use of property acquired by the project being used as a cannabis farm. It was let on the open rental market, and managed by property agents, to help recoup costs to the taxpayer.
“We have been unable to relet the property since the farm was closed down by police because the costs of returning it to a lettable state are too great. The area is patrolled by our private security teams, who work closely with Staffordshire Constabulary.”
On the cannabis farm discovered at Mr Wilkinson’s former home, Staffordshire Police said Darren Pinnington, 32, of Gomville Road, Liverpool, was charged with being concerned in the production of a controlled class B drug in May.
He pleaded guilty to the charge at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in July and is awaiting sentencing.
The HS2 section that is still going ahead will run from London to Handsacre in Staffordshire with a spur to Birmingham, but delays and spiralling costs mean no target date has yet been announced for its opening.
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