HS2 Phase 2a (West Midlands – Crewe) hybrid Bill environmental statement

We’re looking for comments on the HS2 Phase 2a environmental statement.

This consultation is required by parliamentary rules to allow members of the public and other interested parties to comment on the environmental statement which accompanies the High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) hybrid Bill.

The HS2 Phase 2a environmental statement includes:

• likely significant environmental impacts along the route
• measures to avoid, manage and reduce these

A draft version of the HS2 Phase 2a environmental statement was consulted on from September to November 2016. Comments received during this consultation have informed the final HS2 Phase 2a environmental statement.

Consultation responses will be summarised by an independent assessor appointed by Parliament and used to inform the House of Commons’ debate on the scheme at Second Reading.

Consultation responses will be published on a publicly accessible website. Individuals’ names, addresses or signatures will not be published. However, please do not include information in your response that could identify you, unless you are happy for it to be made public.

If you do not want any of your response to be published, you should clearly mark it as ‘confidential’ in the subject line of the email or at the top of your letter. Responses marked ‘confidential’ will still be passed to the independent assessor for consideration, but your personal information will not be mentioned in the report.

All information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to disclosure in accordance with access to information regimes, primarily the:

• Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Environmental Information Regulations 2004

Under the FOIA, there is a statutory code of practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals with our confidentiality obligations, amongst other things. In view of this, it would be helpful if you could explain in your response why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information you provide, we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding for the Department for Transport or HS2 Ltd.

Please only use the channels listed below when responding to this consultation. We cannot guarantee that responses sent to any other addresses will be included in this consultation.

There is no limit to the size of consultation responses that will be accepted. Many email providers, however, set a 25MB limit per single emailed response as standard practice to protect against systems failing. We are happy to receive responses over 25MB by alternative means, including via free file sharing sites or on a memory stick sent through the post.