Five Minutes On…

HS2’s 2026 reset has moved the dates, the top speed and the map. Here’s what that means for conveyancers acting on properties near the route.

If the latest estimates hold, the first HS2 passenger train won’t leave Old Oak Common until some time between 2036 and 2039. For conveyancers, though, the railway has been live for years. Safeguarding, blight, construction and property sales all show up in transactions now, and the picture changed again in 2026.

What is HS2 now?

HS2 is a new high-speed railway between London Euston and Birmingham Curzon Street, with a connection to the West Coast Main Line at Handsacre Junction in Staffordshire so that services can carry on to the North West and Scotland.

The northern legs were cancelled in two stages: the eastern leg to Leeds in 2021, and the route from Birmingham to Manchester in October 2023. What’s being built today is the line once known as Phase 1.

What changed in 2026?

In May 2026 the Transport Secretary published the results of the programme reset led by HS2 Ltd’s chief executive, Mark Wild, in the government’s latest report to Parliament. The headline numbers:

an expected cost of £87.7 billion to £102.7 billion
first trains between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street between May 2036 and October 2039
the full scheme, including Euston and the Handsacre connection, between May 2040 and December 2043
a top speed of up to 320km/h (just under 200mph) instead of the planned 360km/h, adding around three minutes to a London to Birmingham journey

The final stages of the reset are expected to finish in the first half of 2027, with a full delivery baseline to follow, so it’s safest to treat every date as a range rather than a promise.

Where does safeguarding stand along the old route?

It depends which section the property sits on, and the four sections now tell four different stories.

London to the West Midlands: construction is underway and safeguarding remains in place. HS2 Ltd has also started marketing surplus properties along this stretch, so former HS2 homes are beginning to come back onto the market.
West Midlands to Crewe (the former Phase 2a): safeguarding was lifted across most of the route in January 2024, and the compulsory purchase powers expired on 11 February 2026. The government is keeping the land it has already bought, though, because it intends to build a new Birmingham to Manchester line in the long term. It has been clear that this won’t be a revival of HS2, and no specification or timetable has been set.
West Midlands to Leeds (the former eastern leg): safeguarding was lifted in July 2025 and a programme to sell 558 properties is under way, with open market sales expected later in 2026. Under the Crichel Down Rules, former owners whose properties were bought under statutory blight or compulsory purchase get the first chance to buy them back at current market value.
Crewe to Manchester (the former western leg): in January 2026 the government confirmed that the section into Manchester, via the airport, will become part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Why does HS2 matter in a transaction?

Inside safeguarded areas, owners may be able to serve a blight notice, and land needed for the railway can be acquired through compulsory purchase. Outside them, proximity to the route can still affect value and saleability through construction traffic, noise and vibration, and the general uncertainty that a project of this size brings.

The new timetable matters here too. With opening pushed back, construction impacts will be felt by communities along the line for longer than buyers may expect, and lenders may take a closer look at properties near the route.

There’s also a newer scenario: buying a property that HS2 once owned. Some of these homes have stood empty or been let on short tenancies for years, so a full survey is sensible, and the buyer’s conveyancer will want to understand any Crichel Down offer-back history and what was acquired, released or retained.

What will the CON29 tell you?

CON29 question 3.5 asks whether the property is, or will be, within 200 metres of the centre line of a proposed railway, tramway, light railway or monorail, and whether there are any rail proposals within the local authority’s boundary. We cover how it works in Five Minutes On… Road and Rail Schemes.

For a project of HS2’s scale, 200 metres is a narrow view. Noise, vibration, construction disruption and blight can reach further, and the CON29 won’t tell you about safeguarding history on cancelled sections or properties being sold off. That’s why a dedicated HS2 search is often worth adding anywhere near the line. It will typically confirm:

the nearest distance between the property and the route
the maximum train speed at the nearest point, which is relevant to noise
whether the property falls within a safeguarded area or compensation zone
any property schemes or compensation the owner may be entitled to
construction timelines for the local area

Which areas are affected?

The line under construction runs from Camden and Ealing in London, through Hillingdon, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, West Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, to Solihull, Birmingham and Lichfield in Staffordshire. For a property-level view, the HS2 interactive map is the quickest place to start.

Along the cancelled sections, the direct property scheme questions have mostly fallen away, but residual blight, retained land near Crewe and the eastern leg disposals mean HS2 can still come up in places where no train will ever run.

Start every HS2 question by establishing which section the property sits on. A house in Buckinghamshire, one near Crewe and one on the former eastern leg now raise three quite different sets of issues, from live construction and compensation to retained land and Crichel Down buy-backs.

The first passenger may still be a decade away, but HS2 has been part of the conveyancing file for years, and on the current timetable it will be staying there for a good while yet.

Japanese knotweed rarely brings down a house. It brings down sales, mortgage offers and sometimes a seller’s defence in court.

In 2023, a buyer clearing the garden of his new £700,000 home in south-west London found knotweed growing behind a bush near the shed. The seller had ticked “no” on the TA6, and the bill that followed came to roughly £200,000. The plant hasn’t changed much since then, but the form has, so here is where knotweed stands for conveyancers in 2026.

What is Japanese knotweed, and is it illegal to have it?

Japanese knotweed is an invasive plant that spreads underground through rhizomes, and even small fragments can regrow. Left unmanaged, it can push through paving, crack garden walls and get into drains and outbuildings. It is far less likely to threaten the structure of a sound house, although buyers and lenders don’t always find that reassuring.

Having it isn’t illegal, and there’s no duty to remove it from your own land. The law applies in three other places. It is an offence under section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to plant it or otherwise cause it to grow in the wild. Knotweed and soil containing it count as controlled waste, so it can’t go in the green bin (or a skip). And councils can serve a community protection notice on an owner who lets it spread and does nothing about it.

What does the TA6 ask about it now?

Since 30 March 2026, firms accredited under the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme have had to use the sixth edition of the TA6 for every new instruction. The fourth and fifth editions have been withdrawn, although matters already running on an older form can carry on with it.

Knotweed sits in section 8, Environmental matters. Question 8.6 asks whether the property is affected, and 8.7 asks about surveys and management plans. The Law Society’s explanatory notes say a property is usually treated as at risk if knotweed is growing on it or within three metres of its boundary. They also accept that sellers can’t easily be certain, because rhizome can sit in the soil with nothing showing above ground. That’s why many sellers answer “not known”.

Is “not known” a safe answer?

If it’s true, yes. An honest “not known” passes the job of investigating to the buyer, who can commission a specialist survey if they want certainty.

It isn’t a hiding place, though. A seller with a treatment invoice in a drawer doesn’t “not know”, and the notes are clear that sellers must answer from what they know and update their answers if anything changes before exchange. That applies to executors and attorneys too, even if they’ve never set foot in the garden.

The riskier box is “no”, because it is a positive statement that the plant isn’t there. In the 2023 case, expert evidence showed the knotweed by the shed had once stood around two metres tall and had been treated with herbicide during the seller’s ownership. The court didn’t accept that he believed his answer, and he was ordered to pay around £32,000 in damages plus up to £95,000 of the buyer’s legal costs.

Whatever happened to the seven-metre rule?

RICS dug it up in 2022, and unlike the plant, it hasn’t grown back. The RICS standard Japanese knotweed and residential property, in force since 23 March 2022, replaced the old rule of thumb that any knotweed within seven metres of a house was a problem.

Valuers now use a decision tree that places an infestation in one of four management categories, A to D, based on what it is actually doing: whether it’s affecting a structure, restricting use of the garden or simply growing nearby. Lenders generally only expect a retention in the more serious categories, and knotweed on a neighbour’s land within three metres of the boundary won’t usually trigger one by itself. Individual lenders can still set their own criteria, so it’s worth checking.

What if it crosses the boundary?

Then it becomes a nuisance question. In Network Rail v Williams [2018] EWCA Civ 1514, the Court of Appeal held that rhizomes encroaching onto a neighbour’s land can be an actionable nuisance before any physical damage is done, where the landowner knows (or ought to know) about the risk and doesn’t act reasonably.

The Supreme Court narrowed that in Davies v Bridgend County Borough Council [2024] UKSC 15. Knotweed had spread from council land into Mr Davies’s garden long before the council was in breach of any duty, and he couldn’t recover the loss in value that remained after treatment, because the breach hadn’t caused it. Historic spread is now a much harder claim to win. Knotweed heading over the fence today is a different matter.

What should a buyer ask for?

Paperwork. Where knotweed is present or has been treated, the buyer’s conveyancer should expect to see:

a survey by a contractor accredited by the Property Care Association or the Invasive Non-Native Specialists Association
a written management plan, usually running over several years
an insurance-backed guarantee, typically for ten years, with confirmation that it transfers to the buyer
records of the treatment carried out so far

The aim these days is management rather than eradication. A documented, guaranteed infestation is something a lender can work with. An undocumented one is a guess. An environmental search can also help show whether knotweed has been recorded nearby. [CHECK: confirm which OneSearch reports include knotweed data and link the specific product]

The knotweed behind that shed in south-west London cost its seller about £200,000, and hardly any of it went on digging. Almost all of it came from one tick in the wrong box.

So treat question 8.6 as the start of a conversation. A “yes” should arrive with a plan and a guarantee, a “not known” is an invitation to survey, and a “no” deserves a polite question about what it’s based on.

Gazumping is still legal in England and Wales, and will be for a while yet. Here’s why it happens, what it costs and what’s changing.

Agree a price on a house in Glasgow and, once the missives are concluded, both sides are bound. Agree a price in Gloucester and what you have is an accepted offer, a memorandum of sale and around four months of hoping nobody turns up with a bigger number. That gap is where gazumping lives. In June 2026 the government said it intends to close it, just not yet.

What is gazumping?

Gazumping is when a seller accepts one offer, then drops it for a higher one from someone else before contracts are exchanged. The first buyer can match or beat the new figure, or walk away.

It has a mirror image. Gazundering is when a buyer cuts their offer late in the transaction, often close to exchange, betting that the seller (and possibly a whole chain) can’t afford to start again.

Why is it legal?

Because until exchange there’s nothing to break. An accepted offer isn’t a contract, and neither is the estate agent’s memorandum of sale. A contract for the sale of land has to be in writing, signed by both parties and contain all the agreed terms under section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, and in a residential sale that normally happens at exchange.

Agents don’t stop taking offers, either. Under the Estate Agents (Undesirable Practices) (No. 2) Order 1991, they must pass every offer to the seller promptly and in writing, unless the seller has said in writing that they don’t want to receive it. “Under offer” on a listing tells buyers where things stand. It doesn’t close the door.

Why is it so rare in Scotland?

A Scottish sale becomes binding when the missives are concluded, which usually happens well before the equivalent of exchange in England and Wales. Once that’s done, there’s no room for a late bidder. Scotland also has Home Reports, so buyers have the key information before they offer. That combination is exactly what the government now wants south of the border.

What does it cost a buyer?

Everything spent before exchange is at risk: searches, survey, mortgage arrangement fees and legal costs. If the buyer has already agreed their own sale or given notice on a rented home, the damage can travel down the chain.

Gazumping is only one way a sale collapses. The government puts the share of sales that fall through, for any reason, at around one in three.

What is the government planning?

The home buying and selling reform roadmap, published on 19 June 2026, commits to two things that matter here. The first is mandatory sales packs, including searches and a property condition report, prepared before a property is marketed. The second is binding conditional contracts much earlier in the transaction, with penalties for pulling out without a valid reason and exceptions for situations such as a collapsed chain.

The order matters. Binding contracts need new legislation, which the government will introduce when parliamentary time allows, and they won’t come into force until sales packs are embedded. The target is the end of this Parliament. Until then, gazumping is exactly as legal as it was when we first wrote about it in 2022.

What can buyers do in the meantime?

Shorten the gap, and protect what’s spent inside it. Practical steps include:

getting a mortgage in principle before offering, so the seller sees a buyer who can move
instructing a conveyancer as soon as the offer is accepted, with ID and source of funds ready to go
asking for the property to come off the market as a condition of the offer
considering a lock-out (exclusivity) agreement for a fixed period

Some of the cost can be protected too. OneSearch Pledge is a warranty added to a search order that reimburses the searches in that order, up to £300, if the purchase falls through for one of the listed reasons. One of them is the seller accepting an offer at least £1,000 higher that the buyer is unwilling to match. It isn’t an insurance product, and the cost of Pledge itself isn’t refunded.

In Glasgow, the handshake and the contract arrive much closer together. In Gloucester there are still months between them, and the reforms that would close that gap are some way off.

Until they arrive, the best advice is to keep the gap as short as possible, and to make sure the money spent inside it isn’t money the client can’t afford to lose.

Of all the risks conveyancers deal with, Friday afternoon fraud is one of the most damaging. It does not rely on a defect in title or a missed search result. It relies on a single email arriving at the right moment with the wrong bank details.

Here is how it works, why the name undersells it, and what firms can do to stop it.

What is Friday afternoon fraud?

It is a form of payment diversion fraud. Criminals intercept and redirect legitimate property purchase funds by impersonating solicitors, estate agents or buyers. The aim is simple: persuade someone to send a deposit, completion monies or sale proceeds to an account the fraudster controls.

The numbers show why it persists. Between April 2024 and March 2025, 143 cases of conveyancing fraud were reported to Action Fraud, with losses of £11.7 million. The average loss was around £82,000, and victims were noticeably younger than for many frauds, with 32% aged 40–49 and 27% aged 30–39. For a first-time buyer, that is often everything they have saved.

Why Friday, and why does the name undersell it?

The name comes from timing. Completions often happen on a Friday, and the weekend buys criminals time to avoid detection. By the time anyone notices on Monday, the money has usually been moved on.

The name is also a little misleading, because it can happen on any day. The real pattern is not the day of the week. The scams are timed for the final stages of a transaction, when large sums are expected to move quickly. That can mean exchange, a deposit request or the release of sale proceeds, as well as completion.

How does the attack work?

There are two common routes. The fraudster either takes over a genuine email account or spoofs one with a lookalike domain, then sends “updated” bank details. A hijacked account is the more dangerous of the two, because the email really does come from the right address.

Compromised mailboxes are rarely used straight away. The fraudster will often read along for weeks, learning the matter, the names involved and the tone of the correspondence. The fake request then arrives at exactly the point a client is expecting to pay.

The weak point is not always the firm. Sometimes the solicitor has been hacked, but often the homebuyer has fallen for a phishing attack. That is why client education matters as much as internal security.

What are the warning signs?

Most fraudulent requests share a few features:

Bank details that change, or arrive for the first time, late in the transaction.
Small alterations to names, email addresses or company details, such as ‘m’ swapped for ‘rn’.
A reply-to address that differs from the sender address.
Pressure to pay quickly, often with a warning that any delay will cost the client the property.
An account name or bank that does not fit the firm.

None of these is conclusive on its own. Together, they are a reason to stop and check.

What should firms have in place?

The most effective control is a simple rule: bank details are never changed by email. Give clients the firm’s account details at the start, in the client care letter and ideally by a second route. Tell them plainly that the firm will never change them by email.

The NCA and Law Society guidance for property transactions comes down to three steps. Call before transferring money, because emails can be intercepted. Send a small test sum and confirm it has arrived. Do not transfer anything until you are satisfied the details are correct. The call has to go to a number already held on file, never one given in the suspicious email.

Beyond that, firms can:

Use multi-factor authentication on every mailbox.
Train staff to treat any change of payment details as a potential fraud until proven otherwise.
Put a fraud warning in email signatures and client care letters.
Use Confirmation of Payee checks as an extra layer, but not as the only one.

The same discipline applies in the other direction. When a seller client emails asking for proceeds to go to a new account, it deserves the same scrutiny as a buyer being asked to pay.

What happens if money goes to the wrong account?

Speed is everything. Contact the sending bank immediately, because the chances of recovery fall with every hour. The incident should also be reported to the national fraud reporting service.

Firms have regulatory duties too. In one case, an experienced solicitor was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £16,000 in costs after being tricked into transferring more than £290,000 to a hacker. There was no dishonesty, but the SRA expects such cases to be reported, even where the stolen money has been replaced.

Friday afternoon fraud succeeds because it exploits the moment a transaction is most exposed: large sums, tight deadlines and clients who are expecting to pay. The technology behind it can be sophisticated, but the defence is not. A clear rule that bank details are never changed by email, backed by a phone call to a known number, stops most attacks.

The firms that avoid losses are rarely the ones with the most advanced systems. They are the ones where every member of staff, and every client, knows to stop when payment details change and to check before anything moves.

One consent. Compulsory purchase powers, planning permission, listed building consent, highway works authority – all in a single document.

A Development Consent Order is how a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project actually gets permission to be built. It’s a single instrument that can carry an enormous amount of legal weight, and for anyone with land in a scheme’s path, knowing how the process works – and when to get involved – matters a great deal.

Here’s how a DCO is granted, what it can contain, and what it means for landowners along the way.

What is a DCO?

Introduced by the Planning Act 2008 in the wake of the protracted Heathrow Terminal 5 inquiry, the Development Consent Order was designed to replace a patchwork of separate applications – planning permission, compulsory purchase order, listed building consent, highway authorisations – with a single order covering everything a project needs. Rather than an applicant seeking each consent from a different body, one DCO application, examined by the Planning Inspectorate and decided by the Secretary of State, can grant the lot at once.

That consolidation is the whole point of the regime: fewer processes, one timetable, one decision.

What can a DCO actually contain?

Beyond planning permission for the development itself, a DCO can include powers relating to highway works, discharging water, surveying and investigating land, protecting buildings, felling trees and removing hedgerows, extinguishing or diverting public rights of way, and – significantly – land acquisition powers, including compulsory acquisition, the power to override easements, and the power to take temporary possession of land during construction.

In effect, a single DCO can do the legal work of several separate consents and orders that would otherwise each need their own application, their own consultation, and their own decision-maker.

How is a DCO granted? The six stages

The process runs through six defined stages, each with its own statutory timescale: pre-application, acceptance, pre-examination, examination, decision, and post-decision. It’s a front-loaded process – the applicant must fully scope the scheme and consult widely, including with statutory consultees, local authorities, landowners and tenants, and the public, before the application is even submitted for acceptance.

Once accepted, the Planning Inspectorate examines the application, typically over a period of months, before making a recommendation to the relevant Secretary of State, who takes the final decision. Government’s target for the whole process, from acceptance to decision, is around 12 to 15 months – a significant reduction from the multi-year timescales that preceded the 2008 Act.

How do you get a say?

Relevant local authorities automatically become Interested Parties. Anyone else – a landowner, a tenant, a member of the public – has to formally register as an Interested Party during a minimum 28-day registration window, which is what gives someone the right to submit written representations and request to speak during the examination. Missing that window is a real risk: registration isn’t a formality, and someone directly affected by a scheme who doesn’t register in time can lose their formal route to be heard.

What about compulsory acquisition specifically?

Sections 122 to 134 of the Planning Act 2008 set out both the ability to include compulsory acquisition powers within a DCO and the specific conditions that must be satisfied before those powers can be granted. A DCO’s compulsory acquisition function is legally separate from its planning function – the two are assessed against different tests, even though they’re delivered through the same order. Where the conditions are met, this route avoids the applicant needing to seek a separate, standalone compulsory purchase order.

How is this different from a standard CPO?

A conventional compulsory purchase order is a standalone process for one scheme, brought by one authority, under its own dedicated legislation. A DCO’s compulsory acquisition powers are one element within a much larger, bundled consent – so land might be compulsorily acquired as an incidental part of a decision that’s primarily about granting planning permission for the wider infrastructure scheme, rather than through a process that was ever solely about the acquisition itself.

Why does this matter for a transaction?

Because so much is decided within a single order, a DCO can affect a property in ways that wouldn’t show up through the usual routes: not just planning permission for a scheme nearby, but compulsory acquisition, rights of way extinguished, or temporary possession of land during construction, all authorised at once. As with NSIPs generally, this sits with the Planning Inspectorate’s national register rather than local authority planning records, so it’s a case where the standard local search won’t necessarily be the tool that reveals it. For any property near a proposed NSIP, checking the national infrastructure register – and understanding the Interested Party registration window if a client wants to have any say – is worth doing well before examination gets underway.

A DCO isn’t just a bigger planning permission. It’s a fundamentally different legal instrument, capable of granting compulsory acquisition powers, rights of way changes, and construction authorisations all in one document.

For anyone with land near a proposed NSIP, understanding what a DCO can do – and how narrow the window is to formally take part – matters well before a decision is ever made.

Some properties aren’t blighted by what’s happened. They’re blighted by what might.

A road scheme is proposed. A compulsory purchase power exists but hasn‘t been used. The property sits in limbo – too affected to sell at a fair price, not yet acquired by anyone. The blight notice exists for exactly that gap, and it works in a direction most people don’t expect: it lets the owner force the authority to buy.

Here’s how it works, and why it’s sometimes called “reverse compulsory purchase.“

What is a blight notice?

Sections 149 to 171 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allow a person with a qualifying interest in certain categories of land to require the relevant authority to purchase that interest. Rather than the authority initiating acquisition, as it would under a compulsory purchase order, the owner initiates it themselves. That reversal of the usual sequence is why the mechanism is commonly described as reverse compulsory purchase.

It exists to relieve a specific kind of hardship: land can become effectively unsellable, or only sellable at a heavily discounted price, once a planning or highway proposal makes clear that it may eventually be acquired or affected – long before any actual scheme, or any CPO, materialises. Without the blight notice route, an owner could be left in limbo for years, unable to sell at a fair price and with little certainty about when the position will be resolved.

What counts as “blighted land”?

Not every property near a proposal qualifies. The land has to fall within one of the specific categories set out in Schedule 13 of the Act – a list significantly amended by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 – which covers things like land allocated in development plans for public authority functions, land affected by highway schemes at defined stages, land within new town or urban development designations, and land where compulsory purchase powers exist but haven’t yet been exercised.

Being near a general area of planned change isn’t enough. The land has to sit within one of the defined statutory categories, which is a narrower test than it might first appear.

Who can serve one?

The right is limited to owner-occupiers, not investors or landlords generally. In practice that means: an owner-occupier of a private dwelling, an owner-occupier of business premises below a set rateable value threshold, an owner-occupier of an agricultural unit, a mortgage lender with the power to sell and give immediate possession, or the personal representative of someone who would have qualified before their death.

What do you have to show first?

Beyond the property falling within a blighted land category and the claimant holding a qualifying interest, the owner generally has to show they made reasonable efforts to sell the property and could only do so, if at all, at a price substantially lower than it would fetch without the blight. That “reasonable endeavours to sell” test sits at the heart of most claims.

There’s an exception. Where the relevant compulsory purchase powers remain exercisable over the land, the owner doesn’t need to demonstrate a failed sale attempt at all – the notice can proceed on that basis alone.

What happens once a notice is served?

The authority can accept the notice, or serve a counter-notice objecting to it on specified statutory grounds within two months. If the owner disagrees with a counter-notice, or with a rejection, they can refer the matter to the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) within a further two months. Where a blight notice takes effect – whether by acceptance, tribunal determination, or the authority simply not responding in time – the authority becomes bound to purchase the interest, and compensation is assessed broadly as if the land had been compulsorily acquired.

How is this different from a Part 1 Land Compensation Act claim?

The two sit at opposite ends of the same problem. A Part 1 claim is made after public works are built and in use, for depreciation caused by their operation – noise, vibration, and the like – with no land changing hands. A blight notice is available before anything is built, in some cases before any scheme is even confirmed, and forces the outright purchase of the land itself rather than compensating for a fall in value while ownership continues.

Put another way: Part 1 compensates you for staying put next to something that now exists. A blight notice gets you out from under something that might.

Why does this matter for a transaction?

For a seller, a blight notice may be the only realistic route to a fair sale if a proposal has made the property genuinely unsellable on the open market. For a buyer, it’s worth knowing whether a seller has already served, or is eligible to serve, a blight notice on a property affected by a nearby scheme – because the availability of a blight notice can depend heavily on who owns and occupies the property at the relevant time, making timing an important consideration

Blight notices are a narrow, procedural remedy – but where a genuine Schedule 13 designation applies and a sale has failed because of it, they can be the difference between years in limbo and a fair, timely purchase.

Anywhere a planning or highway proposal has cast a long shadow over a property without yet delivering a scheme or a CPO, it’s worth asking whether that shadow meets the statutory test.