HILLINGDON has a better chance of winning a legal battle on High Speed Two (HS2) than it did with Heathrow's third runway, according to council leader Ray Puddifoot.
The Conservative chief of Hillingdon Council told the Gazette that the ongoing public consultation on the plans was 'the worst I have ever seen'.
Although it is still too early to start legal proceedings on a potential judicial review, like the one which anti-third runway campaigners won against the government a year ago, Mr Puddifoot said he was confident the law was on the council's side once again.
"You have to let the consultation end and the decision be made before we can bring a judicial review, but we have got legal advisors looking at grounds for it and we are confident that the business case is flawed," he said. "It is very similar to Heathrow, because the business case doesn't stack up and a environmental impact study hasn't been undertaken.
"This railway line was only proposed to get a high-speed link to Heathrow, if that was not the case they would have taken it up the M1. The necessity of a link to Heathrow is part of the business case.
"I think we have a better chance than we did against the Heathrow third runway, this [HS2] is probably the poorest consultation of any sort I have seen from any government."
When a judicial review against Heathrow's third runway was brought in March 2010 by a coalition of organisations, including the council, a High Court judge ruled that the Department for Transport's consultation could not stand because it ignored the latest policy on climate change and the price of carbon.
At the HS2 Ltd exhibition in Ruislip last month, the company's chief executive Alison Munro said she didn't know how long it would take the railway to offset the 1.2million tonnes of carbon it is predicted to emit during construction.
The HS2 consultation began in February and will end on July 29.
