Project brief:

Following our experience providing referencing services for railway projects involving Crossrail, CTRL/HS1and the West Coast Main Line, TerraQuest were engaged on the HS2 high-speed rail project to supply referencing services for the London and West Midlands Metropolitan contract areas for the pre and post deposit phase of the project. Following Royal Assent, TerraQuest was re-engaged to provide a full referencing service in support of the Land Acquisition and Access for surveys programmes for Area North.

We worked alongside the client to seamlessly provide reliable land identification, referencing and ownership advice, from initial survey stages to beyond the Hybrid Bill deposit, including subsequent land acquisition support.

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Our solution:

We provided land referencing services to support the preparation and submission of the Book of Reference for the Hybrid Bill, as well as for subsequent updates following the bill’s deposit.

We delivered a full suite of land referencing services, comprised of detailed initial research followed by comprehensive site visits, to ensure all land was competently identified and assessed to facilitate the referencing schedules and Book of Reference required for the Hybrid Bill. In addition, we outlined the acquisition powers associated with various interests across the project and handled the delivery and monitoring of approximately 20,000 site notices.

We then managed over 1,200 Land Acquisition Areas (LAAs), proactively collaborating with four specialist engineering consultants, to manage data interfaces and supply of quality-assured parcel extent data, for Parliamentary Plan production. This allowed us to provide expert consultation on land-related issues for our client, throughout the project.

Outcomes:

TerraQuest successfully referenced and continually updated the interests of over 6,000 parties, including major landowners, to facilitate essential facets of the HS2 CPO.

We achieved the timely deposit of referencing data and associated deliverables for 2 of the 4 areas awarded. Furthermore, we achieved the creation and updating of sufficient land ownership information to ensure continuous access to some 25 sq. km of land for access purposes, for 7 years, and management of 180,000 production, technical and management documents.

We also facilitated the agreement of over 700 access licenses, to allow essential ecology and geophysical surveys, as well as seconding 14 members of the team into HS2 to assist with the post Royal Assent land assembly.

Thanks to our team’s hard work, land finding and acquisition was sustained with high-quality, accurate and consistent information.