now on bbc news, panorama. chanting: h52, we don't want you. after years of planning and protest, work on britain's biggest building project is underway. this is a big moment, because the project is now actually happening. those in the way of the high speed railway have to move. it's like the king's come around and slapped a notice on my gate and said, "right, you're out." ijust can't believe that they're allowed to treat people like this. i think they've overspent and the only way they can get their money back is by robbing the likes of us. the word is costs are rising. it is the most expensive railway in the world. ever. tonight, on panorama, a whistle—blower speaks out. i was absolutely appalled that numbers could be advanced in such a loose and slapdash fashion. so will hs2 stay on track? i'm not worried about us overspending.

i'm confident we've got a budget we can stand by. it's a grand vision. a network of super—fast trains that will knit the country closer together. from the great cities of the north to euston station here in london. the high speed 2 network will transform rail travel in great britain. it's the backbone to a new high—speed britain connecting the north and the south. high speed 2 will be an engine for growth in the 21st century. it'll take up to 25,000 workers to build the line and, once it's finished, it's claimed 100,000 newjobs will be created, boosting the uk economy by billions of pounds a year. but it is expensive, very expensive. the official cost is £56 billion.

that is more than £800 for every man, woman and child in britain and, to build the line, you need the land it runs across and land does not come cheap. we owned that building, that building, that building and the building you can't see behind was mine. and when did you buy all this property? 2002-2003. michael gross had ambitious plans to develop his euston site as a shopping, residential and business complex well before hs2 came along. so, in august last year, they invoked their statutory powers and took possession.

so they compulsorily purchased it? yeah. how big a compulsory purchase is this? mine is the biggest. the biggest compulsory purchase on the line or ever? ever. it's the biggest compulsory purchase? unfortunately, ever. hs2 has so far paid 90% of what it thinks the land is worth. so how much has hs2 paid you? they've paid me 90% of their unrealistic valuation. so you're saying that they've underestimated the value of your property? 0h, hugely. how much more money are you expecting to get from hs2? i'm expecting much more. go on, give me an idea? it runs into... hundreds of millions of pounds. hundreds of millions of pounds more. hundreds of millions. hes already been paid hundreds of millions but says he's also lost out on the potential to develop the land. hs2 disputes he should be compensated for that. any money paid comes from the public purse. but it's the responsibility of hs2 to make sure they get the best possible value for taxpayers' money, isn't it? the way they get best possible value

is subject to paying a fair and reasonable cost. best possible value doesn't mean getting it on the cheap. that was my lfe's achievement. that's what i worked hard all my life... to be in a position to buy something like this. my position is essentially no different from mr smith and mrs brown, the smallholders up and down the line. it's just a question of noughts. at the end of the day, i sweated blood for my properties at euston and they are taking it away from me at an undervalue. it's legalised theft. —— at the end of the day, i sweated blood for my properties at euston and they are taking it away from me at an undervalue. it's legalised theft. like any big project, working out what land was needed and how much it would cost was key right from the start. get the estimate wrong and it

could easily go over budget. it was doug thornton's job to get the figures right. i was to be hs2‘s land and property director, i was to be responsible, my team were to be responsible, for acquiring all the land interests that hs2 required to purchase to enable the construction of the railway. that's a hugejob, isn't it? yes. it's an enormousjob. you know, i can't think of anything that is bigger here in the uk. this is the first time doug thornton has spoken out publically since leaving hs2. he has years of experience overseeing multi—million—pound land purchase programmes for some of britain's biggest companies. chanting: h52, no, thank you. hsz, we don't want you. by the time he joined hs2, the project was already controversial. protests were up and running. doug thornton was shocked to find hs2‘s early estimates were still in use. the estimates had been done, i believe, by taking a desk—based approach to try to roughly calculate the numbers of properties that hs2 required to purchase

between london and birmingham. they'd tried to work out how much properties were likely to cost. doug thornton says it quickly became clear there were some huge underestimates. what kind of underestimates are we talking about? typically, you would see sort of houses say maybe at £100,000 to £200,000 of a difference. more complex cases, you were seeing orders of magnitude of several million pounds‘ of difference. several million? yes and that really very much concerned me as to the final implications of where that would take the budget. and that's not all. doug thornton compared that early estimate with hs2‘s "book of reference" — a more detailed and up—to—date list of the properties it might need to buy. and the two did not match up.

not at all. there was a gap of almost 100% in terms of the numbers, raw numbers of properties that the organisation had not budgeted for. so you've got two things. you've got 6,000 more properties than in the original estimate and you are discovering that those properties that have been given values are often massive underestimates. that's a kind of double whammy, isn't it? it absolutely is indeed. it's a complete and utter nightmare. it really forcibly hit me between the eyes how enormously wrong the figure that was being advanced by hs2 was. this more detailed work suggested that hs2 could end up spending hundreds of millions of pounds more on property than their early estimate predicted. mark thurston

is hs2‘s chief executive. it's perfectly normal that in a scheme as sort of vast and as complex as hsz that, over time, we have a greater understanding of the alignment of the route, how many land parcels and land areas it affects and what the full extent of the acquisition programmes needs to be. hs2 is now buying the property it needs. but what does that mean for the people and businesses along the route? i'm off to meet some of them in this trusty camper van. its top speed? a sedate 60 miles an hour. the sweet land bakery is in north—west london. it specialises in middle eastern pastries. this is the baklava production. i have several baklava.

i have sugar—free, vegan. this is going to be a luxury ba klava. this is a luxury product. micheline haddad's husband started the family business more than 20 years ago. it now bakes ten million pastries a year. how many people do you employ here? we have 50, 60 people. so not a huge business, but a big employer locally. yes, yes. when businesses are compulsorily purchased, they have to fund the move themselves and justify any compensation claim. the onus was on you to say, listen, we are a thriving business. yes, we had to save ourselves. is that fair? none of it was fair, but they had the power, hs2, to do whatever they want to. i think they had a plan in their minds which was to go to the big companies, relocate their factory, sit with them afterwards, go through bills, then pay. with a small business, that doesn't work.

small businesses don't have the cash flow to move and carry on, let alone build a new factory. hs2 says it recognises the process can hit businesses like sweet land hard. the company has had some compensation but says it's not enough. we've borrowed money on the trading of the company, the family put up their houses, their flats, everything they had. so you've invested everything into keeping the business? yes, it's like poker. you've gambled everything. everything on the table. yes, yes. sweet land has had £2 million to cover its costs but says that's half of what it needs. with interest on debts piling up, the family say time is running out. when is the deadline for this?

end of december, everything is gone. if they didn't give us the money, we lose everything. we've spoken to people who say they're literally on the verge of bankruptcy because they are waiting for payments from hs2. it is absolutely not our intent to bankrupt any business. these transactions are very complex, often there's lots of multiple titles to the land that we have to settle on and, in any individual case, our intention is to pay promptly. we've got to acquire somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 properties and one of my responsibilities is to ensure we reconcile that need to acquire the land and make it value for money. 0urjob is to find a way of doing that as sensitively as possible, giving people a fair price for their property. hs2 says it is trying to resolve sweet land's claim. doug thornton says he'd warned hs2

that buying up the land the railway needed would end up costing far more than it had budgeted for. so you had identified this really significant underestimate. what did you do within hs2? we started to talk about it to our finance team, we talked about it to hr, we talked about it to line managers, so it was there, we were calling it out. we had raised it within the organisation to deaf ears. culturally, i have never seen anything like it. i was absolutely appalled. absolutely appalled that numbers could be advanced in such a loose and slapdash fashion. he says he was expected to brief hs2's non—executive board using the lowerfigure from that early estimate. i refused to use the figure. i felt if i used the figure, i would be personally misleading the board and i was not prepared to put myself in that situation. i absented myself from hs2, i took legal advice. you mean you walked

out of the building? i walked out the building. you said, i'm not doing that. i'm not doing that, i want no part of that. i put my coat on one wednesday evening, walked out of the building and breathed a sigh of relief. he was later dismissed by hs2, which disputes all of his claims. i found it really the most strange sensation. i have never been in a situation like that in my professional career and i never wish to be in a situation like that in my professional career again. he left in 2015. parliament hadn't yet signed off hs2 and mps were scrutinising the scheme, including how much might be spent on land and property. doug thornton believed the figure mps were seeing didn't reflect the true costs. and we've spoken to another former senior hs2 insider who agrees. he says the company had other more accurate but significantly higher estimates of how much land and property would cost.

what you would expect is that the best estimate of costs at the time would be put to mp5, so that they could make an objective judgment about the value of your project. i can't comment on a specific time, because i wasn't here, but what i know we've done is we've continued to evolve the estimate from those early days. what i'm absolutely certain of is in subsequent iterations of estimates for phase one, we have given ministers and mps full disclosure of all of what the scope of is and the cost of phase one. an investigation by the national audit office found hs2's property cost estimates did increase significantly but said hs2 hadn't been required to provide its updated estimates to parliament. when mps voted, they approved the project. the creation of h52 will be the biggest infrastructure project in europe... britain's new high—speed railway was full—steam ahead. archive: british rail is switched on for tomorrow,

switched on for the fastest service in railway history between london, manchester and liverpool. they've spent 175 million on this modernisation. this is a ton—up service which averages around 85 and frequently exceeds 100 miles an hour. hs2 is way more ambitious. its top speed of 225 miles an hour would make it one of the fastest train services in the world. the high speed 2 network — creating tens of thousands ofjobs and new opportunities for us all. the government says that phase one, the line between london and birmingham, will cost around £27 billion. but that figure is in doubt too. michael byng has designed a system used nationally and internationally to cost rail projects. he now acts for people

affected by hs2. he's done his own detailed cost estimates. so michael, how much is the railway to birmingham going to cost? £56 billion. so why on earth are hs2 estimating half of what you think it's going to cost? i believe there is no structured estimate for hs2 and never has been. i'm notanti—high—speed railand i'm not anti—hs2 per se. what i am anti, and i'll make this quite clear, is a poorly conceived, costed and developed project which is what it appears to be. we're confident that we've got an estimate that we can deliver the first phase of the railway for. so you don't agree that his costs... ? no, we don't agree. we don't recognise that work.

we've seen the work, we've seen the basis of those estimates. they don't reconcile to our estimates whatsoever, and our work has been developed over the last three and four years. we're confident that we've got a good estimate for the first phase. when hs2 got the go—ahead from parliament, it got the power to compulsorily purchase the land it needed. here in buckinghamshire, a viaduct is planned to carry the track. this house, an elizabethan manor, lies right in its path. how did you come to get a property like this? well, i've lived in this lane most of my life and i used to run errands for the farmer that used to live here. and my uncle then became a tenant because he worked for the local borough and he then had the right to buy. and what state was it in when you bought it? it was derelict, more

or less derelict. we had to strip the roof completely back. the ceilings and floors were rotten, so we took all of them out. we've given up ten years of our life. itjust took my life savings. i thought, what more can i do for my grandchildren than give them this? and now we're getting hs2 knocking it down to put a stanchion, that's one of the legs of the viaduct. yeah. where does it run from? it runs from over the valley there across this field and right through here. with a stanchion here? yeah. it's devastating. this is not just a house, it's a home. it means a lot to us. we've spent a lot of time, put a lot of effort into it, and now it'sjust going to be taken away from us. crystal, ron's daughter,

who has four children under five including baby twins, co—owns the house with her dad. hs2 has offered compensation, but the family say it's some way off the real value of their home. but you've got an elizabethan manor house. is it reasonable to ask for like for like? to get a manor house this near london, it's going to cost millions, isn't it? well, that isn't my fault. i'm not the one that wants to move. i'll stay here, then. if they want to knock the house down, pay the piper. if i want to buy something that i can't afford, i don't buy it. and i'm not getting like for like, i'm just getting a silly offer that i could buy something, you know, in a street or whatever. i chose not to live in a street all my life. i've lived in this rural setting all of my life. i don't want to spend the rest of my life arguing with neighbours. the kidsjust don't know anything about it and that's how

i would like to keep it. but at the same time, at one point in their life soon, it's all going to change. what do you mean? it's all going to change, for the kids and for us. but mostly the kids. you mean you'll have to move? yeah, and their lives will change completely. hopefully for the better, but we don't know that because we don't know where we'll go. but it does mean you won't be with your family? curzon street is to be

birmingham's high—speed station. construction began a couple of months ago. hs2 is being built here behind us, as we see. this will benefit the whole of the uk and actually, the west midlands will be the primary beneficiary because we will be right at the centre of this. so it's aboutjobs, it's about economic regeneration of areas along the line and brilliant connectivity between ten of the uk's biggest cities. not everyone in birmingham is so enthusiastic. you're putting people on the streets. they're on the dole tomorrow. hs2 wasn't designed to put people on the dole. they come down to take possession of the property. we've been served notice, the three months‘ notice. we refused to hand the keys over. we padlocked the gates up. we done what we had to do. no more, no less. darren bartlett owned this

yard, which was taken by hs2 in july. he thinks the process is unfair. if you buy a house off somebody, you don't get the keys until you've paid for it. hs2 are taking the keys and then doing the negotiations afterwards. so you've lost the one thing that you've got. you've lost your keys, which is, you've lost your land. hs2 has since made him an offer, but like others we've met, darren says it doesn't reflect the yards actual value. there were two businesses on the site, which sits on a busyjunction. one of his tenants, adnan bhatti, ran a garage here. i used to have tyres in the first unite and the ramps were there to repair the cars and everything. it must be weird for you, coming back and seeing the security guards. it's madness. i owned it for 31 years with my brother. my late father made me buy it when i was 19. there's no words to

comprehend it, really. we're in 2018 and it's almost like we've gone back 200 years. it's like the king came along and slapped a sign on your gate saying "right, you're out, this is the king's land". like you're a peasant. they don't understand working class people are not as big as the big companies. we don't have the savings, we have to work and pay the bills. i might have to sell the house because i can't afford to run the business and can't afford to pay all my debts. adnan has received no money at all. hs2 disputes that he's entitled to any compensation. and you don't have to go far to find more people whose lives have been disrupted by the new railway. carly sitek and her father have a wood recycling business. dad started off with one truck on his own, collecting pallets from various businesses and selling them on. the business is our lives. since i've been small, it's always been that dad has worked seven days a week.

mum got involved as well as taking care of me, and then it has grown over time. 0ur lives have been wood waste. there's 30 employees. it was in 2016 that the family say they first got wind that hs2 might need their old leasehold site. they say they heard little more until late last year, when they were given notice to leave. three months‘ notice to move, they gave us altogether. three months‘ notice? three months‘ notice to move a three acre operation. hs2 said, "all of your moving costs will be paid for, any loss of earnings, any extra labour you‘ve had to take". everything, they said we would be paid. with industrial land in short supply, carly said she had to pay over the odds for her new site. they moved the business over a single weekend. for all the machinery,

we had to hire a low loader to move it all. why did you have to do it all in two days? because we couldn‘t afford to shut the operation. we‘d lose customers, so we had to keep trading. and because of the pressure to find a site at such short notice, carly says she had to buy a place that wasn‘t well suited to her business. this is a temporary structure that we‘ve had to put up so we had the height to load these lorries and to give us extra space, because this building was not big enough for us. so this is just like a giant tent. what has hs2 said about providing you with money? all that they‘ve provided us with is an interim payment. they‘re saying this is 90% of what we‘ll be getting, which is £45,000 out of £300,000 we spent on the move. they‘re paying you 45,000. and you‘re saying you spent 300,000. yes, and i didn‘t receive that until august this year, when we‘d been on the site for nearly eight months and i said, "if you don‘t pay me some compensation, i won‘t be able to pay my vat bill and the business is going to have to shut".

hs2 says it‘s still working to see what further compensation might be payable. hi, paul, nice to meet you. how has this been for you? it's like highway robbery. they took all our savings, all our emergency money. nothing left at all now. i'm a proud brummie and what's good for birmingham is good for me, but it's the way they've gone about it. i can't understand what they're doing. it's crucifying us. i think they've overspent and the only way they can get their money back is by robbing the likes of us. hs2 denies it‘s in trouble, but the company acknowledges that it is facing challenges to keep costs within budget. your contractors are coming back and saying, "i can‘t build what you want me to build for the prices that you‘ve suggested, it‘s going to cost more than that". that sounds to me like hs2 is over budget.

no, we‘re not over budget. we have to square off the budget, how long it‘s going to take to build and the requirements. and those things by their nature will continue to evolve over the coming months. has hs2 been honest with parliament and the public about the real costs of the project? 0n the evidence i have now, i don't believe they have been totally open and frank with parliament. since the scheme was first put to parliament, the estimated costs of buying up land and property have gone up and up. as we‘ve heard, there‘s pressure on construction costs too. and the second phase from birmingham up to leeds and manchester still needs to be approved by mps. you must be anxious if the project doesn‘t go ahead that you‘re not going to get value for money, are you?

the real prize for the country is tojoin up birmingham to leeds and manchester. the real economic shift that hs2 delivers to great britain is in the second phase. it‘s got a really strong business case and we‘re confident we‘ll get the legislation in the house for the second phase. hs2, by its nature, is one of those schemes that divides opinion, we‘re very aware of that. there‘s a huge groundswell of enthusiasm around the country for hs2, and what‘s really important is that we make hs2 a success because we need hs2 as a country. the question for mps will be whether those national benefits outweigh the vast costs and the upheaval and disruption that thousands of people along the route are already suffering. it‘s awful, because our futures were set. we were on the brink of success and now we‘ve just gone backwards 30 years. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers

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