NEIGHBOURS say they face a decade of misery when work on High Speed 2 begins and are calling for promises of mitigation to make their lives more tolerable.

Residents of Wells House Road, North Acton, will be surrounded by a massive building site when workmen for the new high speed rail line from London to Birmingham begin construction at the Old Oak Common depot.

Amanda Jesson, chairwoman of the Wells House Road Residents’ Association, said: “We’re probably the most negatively affected street in London.

“We back right on to the terminal development. We’re going to have at least 10 years of living on a building site with all the noise and the pollution and everything else.”

The rest of the borough will be saved from disruption by a tunnel from North Acton to Ruislip.

Ms Jesson said HS2’s consultation with residents has been dismal with opaque documents and failures to explain key facts.

Despite HS2 bureaucrats visiting Ms Jesson in April, an official consultation starting in May and a public event in June, residents only discovered plans for a year-long closure of Old Oak Lane two weeks ago – despite it being their main route to the rest of the borough and beyond.

Ms Jesson said the closure will have a massive impact with children forced to take two-hour-long bus rides to school, ambulances taking three and a half mile diversions to reach homes and elderly residents cut off from the bus they rely on.

Neighbours also only found out recently that an access road for lorries will be built alongside the bottom of their gardens, something they said HS2 promised would not happen.

A request to suspend the consultation response deadline on Thursday, in light of the new revelations was denied.

Ms Jesson, said: “HS2 has been really bad at communicating.

“We understand it can’t be stopped we just want to mitigate the disaster for the area.”

Peter Fry, stakeholder manager for HS2, said residents had been properly informed with several attending a public event with experts in June.

He said no new information had been released since the beginning of the consultation.

And added: “There will not be high levels of activity (in the area) for the whole construction period of HS2.

“Through this consultation process, HS2 Ltd will be looking at ways to manage the impacts on Wells House Road so the residents are not totally isolated from the local area.”