‘I sold my home to HS2 and it became a cannabis farm’

Ex-owner distraught over property on line that was later axed

- ALEX ROSS

A man who sold his home to HS2 says he was left distraught after discovering it had been turned into a cannabis factory.

Alan Wilkinson bought the four-bedroom home in the hillside village of Whitmore Heath in Staffordshire with his wife, Gillian, in the late 1970s.

The couple added a swimming pool and new kitchen - but when proposals emerged for the now-axed HS2 line beneath the hamlet, they pushed forward with plans to move and downsize.

It triggered a battle to sell the home to HS2, a fight Gillian would not see the end of, as she died from pancreatic cancer two weeks before the scheduled move in 2019.

The detached property was not required to make way for the line, but the couple settled on a £1.2m deal with HS2, which purchased it under a “special circumstances” scheme.

But Mr Wilkinson was shocked when he discovered his old home, which had subsequently been rented out, was being used to grow cannabis plants.

“My old neighbour saw two Jehovah’s Witnesses walking out of my old drive and he told them ‘you won’t find anyone in there’,” the 85-year-old said.

“They replied ‘no, but there’s cannabis’. Turns out there was 184 cannabis plants growing inside. They could smell it.”

Soon after, Staffordshire Police raided the house and found the drugs growing in five rooms. A man from Merseyside pleaded guilty to the production of a class B drug in July.