An 85-year-old man who sold his Staffordshire home to HS2 has expressed his distress after the property was discovered to have been used as a cannabis factory. Alan Wilkinson sold the four-bedroom house in Whitmore Heath to the high-speed rail project for £1.2m in 2019, following the death of his wife, Gillian, who had died of pancreatic cancer two weeks before the scheduled move.
The property, which had been rented out by HS2, was found to contain 184 cannabis plants growing in five rooms. A neighbour alerted Mr Wilkinson after two Jehovah's Witnesses mentioned the smell of cannabis. Staffordshire Police later raided the house and charged Darren Pinnington, 32, of Liverpool, with production of a class B drug, to which he pleaded guilty in July.
Mr Wilkinson, a former chair of Whitmore Parish Council, said the ordeal has left him feeling 'awful'. He described the house, where he lived for 30 years, as 'a beautiful house' now sitting empty and abandoned. He also criticised HS2 for destroying the village community, claiming that more than a dozen people died while waiting to sell their homes under the project's plans.
HS2 confirmed that the property was purchased under its 'Special Circumstances Scheme' and has since been let on the open market to recoup taxpayer costs. The company stated it 'utterly condemn[s] the illegal use of property acquired by the project being used as a cannabis farm'. However, it noted that the property cannot be re-let due to the high cost of returning it to a lettable state.
The village of Whitmore Heath was affected by HS2's plans for twin tunnels beneath the hilltop, which were eventually scrapped by the then-Conservative government in 2023. HS2 spent a total of £3.79bn purchasing properties for the overall line, including £633m on the now-cancelled sections. An HS2 spokesperson emphasised that no homeowner was compelled to sell.
