Three families who were forced to move out of their beloved homes, for a National Highways project that went bust, in Northumberland said it was ‘horrible’ and they have ‘been through hell’
Families say they have “been through hell” after a they gave up their homes for a road that was never built.
The government bought £4 million worth of homes and land in Northumberland as part of a project to widen part of the A1, but the plan was ditched in October 2024. Local families who were made to give up their beloved homes and start fresh lives elsewhere have shared their rage as they see their old homes crumble. One couple, who moved to Cumbria after National Highways bought their house, said they had seen buildings “left to rot” unnecessarily.
Melanie Wensby-Scott said she cried on the day she and her husband Julian left their home next to a road near Morpeth. Melanie said she was still running the vacuum cleaner when National Highways contractors had arrived at her home, saying: “They started boarding up the windows and changing the locks. I honestly felt like we were being evicted.”
The couple bought their home in 2009 and made huge renovations to it as they had “no intention of ever leaving”, according to the BBC. These plans were thrown into disarray when a project to to widen a 13-mile section of the A1, to make it dual lanes, was announced by David Cameron in 2014.
Melanie said: “When they first came round I said I didn’t want to move and they basically said I had no option.” The A1 scheme was fair from plain sailing as it bounced between being held up and getting started but this appeared to change with Rishi Sunak in May 2024 after the project was given the green light.
Despite this, the project fell apart and was cancelled just a few months later in October. Melanie shared the rage she felt when she discovered she left her home “for nothing”.
She said: “Everything we went through, the heartache, the angst, I just couldn’t believe it. You drive past now and it’s falling apart, it just looks awful. It’s such a shame, it was such a beautiful house.”
Another affected family said they were forced to move miles away from their friends after their cottage, on the route, was affected. Felicity and James Hester, whose home was near the village of Rock, said their abandoned home was their “perfect place”.
Felicity said: “It was just horrible. We went through four or five years of utter hell trying to find somewhere we could actually move to, it was just a nightmare. The way the property market was at the time in Northumberland, we couldn’t find anything which matched what we had so we had to move to Cumbria.”
Their neighbours, the Beal family, said leaving their two century old farmhouse was “very painful”. Martin Beal, whose family had lived in the property since 1904, said: “I felt like I’d let my family down somehow because I couldn’t save our home. There are just so many memories in there.”
Land agent Louis Fell, who represented the Hester and Beal families said: “I know National Highways didn’t make the decision to cancel the road, but they need to have a strategy for the properties, perhaps consider refurbishing them and renting them to young families.”
National Highways in a statement, to the BBC, said: “We carefully review expenditure on all our projects to ensure that lessons are learned and processes are improved for any future road improvement schemes. Discussions surrounding the future of the homes purchased as part of this scheme remain ongoing and will be communicated in due course.”
These properties could be offered back to their previous owners but all three families said they didn’t want to go back to homes that have been abandoned for years. For example, Martin said his home was “falling apart” and was “full of damp”. He will now build a new farmhouse near his old property – which will be demolished at a staggering cost of £100,000 to the taxpayer.
The Mirror has reached out to National Highways for comment.