Channel tunnel homes payouts

Channel tunnel homes payouts

A scheme by the Department of Transport to compensate people whose houses fell in value because of delays over the Channel tunnel rail link has been given the go-ahead, after pressure from backbenchers and an ombudsman report attributing injustice to maladministration.

A report from the Commons Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration welcomes the scheme, which will mean ex-gratia payments of pounds 5,000 being paid to people who have suffered "exceptional hardship" because they could not sell their homes. due to the tunnel route.Earlier, in a letter to the chairman of the committee, the Secretary of State for Transport, Sir George Young, said the scheme had taken longer to devise than expected because of the "very great difficulty of defining extreme and exceptional hardship".