IT was wholly understandable to read of the alarmed reaction of affected local residents in relation to the High Speed 2 announcement (Knutsford Guardian, January 30 and February 6).

It is vital that those whose homes, businesses or farms are affected, should be fully and fairly compensated.

After all, no-one who purchased these properties would have anticipated the construction of a London to Manchester and Scotland high speed rail route.

But it is still important to recognise that HS2 will bring immense benefits to the north west in general, and to Manchester and north Cheshire in particular.

Those benefits will not just take the form of virtually halving travel times between Manchester and London. The serving of Manchester Airport by HS2 will make the surrounding area a very strong candidate for economic growth.

Manchester Airport’s HS2 station will not only be very convenient for local residents to travel by rail to London, and to Scotland when HS2 reaches northwards through Lancashire.

It will also make the airport significantly more attractive for air travellers to access by rail from outside the north west. Growth at the airport will bring many much-needed jobs, and new jobs there will in turn bring multiple supporting employment in retailing and services in the surrounding town centres. Surely most of your readers will want to see those new jobs available to the next generation of local school leavers?

The Government and HS2 are understood to be wholly committed to not only creating this new transport spine through the UK but also to ensuring that it will be constructed with as little disruption and disturbance as can be realistically achieved.

The route is likely to be designed with numerous environmental mitigation measures such as tree planting and wildlife conservation.

With time, it is likely that the new line will become just another part of the Cheshire landscape, and that the long term economic gain will indeed justify the undoubted inconvenience and disruption to a minority – albeit an important minority – of people’s lives in the shorter term.

DAVID THROWER Ackers Road, Stockton Heath