I live about 100m away from the line eligible for compensation. We're going to essentially be living under a flyover when a dual carriageway is re-routed to make way for station access. Therefore our house is now pretty worthless... thankfully at least we bought right at the bottom of the market so there's minimal negative equity going to be involved in our situation but it's still depressing as hell.
As for other impacts on our local area - the last impact statement gleefully mentioned the loss of half the local playing fields and football pitch... but that it was OK because the pitch could be relocated to the remaining part... which is a bloody steep hill (the pitches are on the flat bit of the parkland) - that shows the level they've actually looked into the impact around here. Oh yeah 98% of local wildlife habitat lost, a thriving community centre bulldozed which warranted about half a sentence in the report, and a 19 foot (I think it was at the last point but they keep adding feet onto it with every bit of paperwork that comes out) viaduct running right through the centre of the local town centre. 2 local pubs, half our local highstreet due to be bulldozed, a JW worship hall, local gymnastics club... but very old mainly blue-collar housing estates so no one really gives a shit to be honest - these people have scrimped and saved to buy their homes which are now essentially worthless.
For the record I get on a train from here with the end destination of London every day - and the service is fine... the track rolling stock is dated and needs updating - but I actually haven't had to put a delay form in in a good few months now thinking about it.
It's basically fodder for people who want a nice big house but don't want to pay London prices and it's going to destroy my local community and probably any hope we had of ever moving up the property ladder in order to provide that... so I guess I'm due another overly offensive explanation of how it's vitally needed from yet another Southerner on here now.
It's not going to bring jobs to the regions - it's going to bring cheaper housing accessible by expanding the South-East commuter belt upwards.
What we actually need around here as someone who uses the intercity route that ends up in London daily (I do a local stop between two cities) is station upgrades of the intermediate stations which are short platforms meaning that the full length of the 8-10 car trains can be boarded on. An improvement on the mainline, upgrade of East Midlands Parkway and improving the transport connections to that ... it was a fucking pain in the rear it being constructed but bring the Nottingham tram to it and on to the airport... and then make Parkway the hub - not the ridiculously congested Toton which jams up to oblivion everytime someone sneezes and is basically in the arse end of nowhere. They're not even going to be able to get the construction traffic up to the depot where they're planning to work from round here - that's how stupid it is.