Hackney residents whose homes were tunnelled beneath entititled to just �50

Residents whose Hackney homes were tunnelled under for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link have had their hopes of substanial compensation dashed.

A lands tribunal at the law courts in the Strand has ruled they are each entitled to just a �50 payout.

Three years after the final five-mile high-speed stretch connecting the new international terminal at Stratford to Kings Cross station was opened, a Lands Tribunal has decided there was no evidence the householders had suffered any “disturbance” or injurious affection” by the �5.2 billion Chunnel.

Fourteen Hackney homeowners, as well as several buisnesses, had lodged claims for compensation, along with dozens of other residents in neighbouring Newham, following the engineering work carried out between 2001 and 2004.

The construction included two twin-bore single track underground tunnels as well as the sinking of a 54 metre ventilation and emergency access shaft on former railway land at the back of Navarino Road, Dalston.

Many of the Hackney claimants live on the route or close by in Graham Road, Fassett Square, Ritson Road, Edmeston Close, Kingsland High Street. Buxhall Crescent as well as Morning Lane, Hackney and Chruch Lodge and Barnabas Road, Homerton.

The tribual ruled each proprety owner was entitled to just a �50 “nominal” payout for the compulsory acqusition by the Department of Transport of the “tube of subsoil” beneath their homes.

Under the law, property owners also own the sub-soil under their homes, but government lawyers sucessfully argued that the “tube of sub-soil” compulsorily acquired to make way for the tunnels had “no value” to anyone but the Department of Transport and householders had suffered no disturbance.

In two separate decisions, the Tribunal ruled the owners of 46 p[roperties-mainly in the E7, E8. E9, E15, E12 postcodes, as well as Barking-are entitled to �50 each, regardless of the length,, volume of depth of the sub-soil acquired.